Clive Cussler; Craig Dirgo

by The Sea Hunters II

  We were passing time waiting for a target to make itself known on the recorders, when I turned to Connie and said, “Time sure flies when you’re having fun.”

  The words were barely out of my mouth when the rancher drove over a ditch in the beach without slowing. Craig and I both tumbled from where we were sitting on the tailgate. He rolled on the sand and back to his feet. I went straight up into the air and down onto my head. The blow crushed two of the discs in my spine. Anguish and torment can’t describe the pain. I could only gasp, unable to utter a word. Everyone stood around in a daze, thinking I had broken my back, until Craig walked over, picking sand from his ear, then looked down at me on the ground.

  “You don’t look so good,” he said, tilting his head to allow the sand to run from his ear.

  Over time Dirgo has proved to be a master of the obvious.

  “Move your leg for me,” he said.

  I did, though in much pain. He reached down to help me to my feet.

  “I think you’ll live to write another day,” he said, as I slowly rose to my feet, “but we might want to take a side trip to the hospital.”

  A trip to the hospital and an X ray told the story. I’ve lost half an inch in height due to age and another inch and a half to a pair of mashed discs. I had compressed from six feet three to six feet one in two seconds and was no longer as tall as Dirk Pitt, the hero in my books. A year and six months would pass before the pain slowly receded.

  I think Craig said it best that day after we left the hospital and were driving back to the motel in the rental car. “I thought we killed the goose that laid the golden egg.”

  “I’ll make it,” I said through gritted teeth.

  Craig steered along the road running down Galveston’s sea-wall. “You know the good thing about motels?”

  “What’s that,” I asked.

  “Ice machines.”

  Craig, who over the years has proven to be a more than an adequate scrounger, continued. “I’m going to get a trash bag and fill it with ice,” he said, “then I’ll take some duct tape and wrap it around your body to hold it in place.”

  It worked, but I looked like a hunchback.

  UNABLE TO GO out on the search boat the following day, I instructed Gronquist to begin running search lanes at the outer edge of the grid and work in while hunting for Invincible with the gradiometer. Not wishing to sit around, I thought I could take my mind off the pain with a side expedition. So Connie, Craig, and I took a little handheld magnetometer and drove the short distance to Harrisburg and looked for the Twin Sisters.

  Craig ran the mag over the area while Connie experienced vibes. There was a low reading, perhaps suggesting a buried target. Craig then drove into town and rented a backhoe and operator. I was still in the throes of anguish when Connie, bless her heart, bought me a lawn chair to sit on and relax my aching back during the dig.

  As soon as the operator with the backhoe arrived, it began to rain. We sat there under newspapers, teeth clenched, as Craig, crammed into the scoop, went down in the trench every few feet, and swept the mag around the bottom, which was now rapidly filling with water. The mag target petered out as we went deeper.

  I paid off the patient backhoe operator, and we drove back to the motel where we stay in Galveston, Gaidos Motor Lodge. No sooner did we walk in, Connie drenched, Craig looking like a snowman built from mud, and me sloped over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, than we find Gronquist and crew packing and almost ready to depart.

  I said, “What’s going on? We have another four days scheduled for the project.”

  Gronquist snapped his bag shut and began walking out the door. “We overturned the boat in the surf, and the gradiometer was immersed and shorted out in the salt water. So we’re calling it quits and going home.”

  I was somewhere between enraged and infuriated. “But you finished the search grid.”

  “Nope,” muttered Gronquist. “We were running the first lane when a wave spilled over the side.”

  “I told you to begin out where it’s calm before working toward the surf.”

  Gronquist merely shrugged. “I though it best to start in close where I thought the ship might be.”

  I thought it was a pity it wasn’t Sunday and Gronquist could have stayed in bed.

  Craig wiped some mud from under his eye and looked at me. “I might be able to fix the mag,” he said, “but do you mind if I take a shower first?”

  Later that night, he repaired the damage with a hair dryer borrowed from the front desk, along with some WD-40, solder, and a soldering gun from the hardware store. By that time the volunteers had already given up, but Connie, Craig, and I managed to spend the remaining days in a fruitless search for the cannon.

  So ended the great calamity of 1989.

  I should have scratched the Twin Sisters off my list of things to do, but I was swept away in an orgy of obstinacy. We’d be back.

  THE NEXT FEW rounds of battle were fought by Craig and me, along with my son Dirk. When Craig was running the NUMA office, he would drive up to my house on Lookout Mountain outside Denver a couple of times a week to report on what was happening, and we’d spend hours talking. One of the topics was the Twin Sisters. He didn’t want to give up and neither did I, so we would occasionally reread the tale and format strategies. Our flights of fancy could become quite elaborate and detailed.

  My personal favorite was the time we waited until dark and then set off into the woods near my home with a pedometer. After walking four hundred yards in a random direction, we marked several trees with dabs of spray paint and returned by a different route. We then waited a week and set out to find them. We never did. Not only that, when we later checked the distance once again with the pedometer, we found that the area where we had searched for the marked trees was more like two hundred or two hundred and fifty yards from my house. That showed that, without accurate aids, estimating distances in a forest at night is at best a hit-or-miss proposition.

  Next we tried carrying a bag of Portland cement, which weighs a lot less than a heavy iron cannon, a distance into the woods. I think I can now tell you that if they were carrying the guns, they didn’t go four hundred yards. More like a hundred and forty yards.

  IN 1989 AND 1994, Craig stopped in Harrisburg for a day here and a day there while going to or returning from other searches, but to no avail. In 1995, when NUMA returned to search for the Texas Navy ship Invincible, Craig and I had a go at it again. I still laugh about this. My son Dirk was due to arrive from Phoenix to lend a hand that afternoon, and since Harrisburg is close to Hobby Airport, where Dirk was arriving, Craig and I figured we could search almost right up until his plane was due to arrive and then rush over and pick him up.

  Over the years, we had moved around our search area and were now concentrating in an area north of the old railroad station and east of the current north-to-south running line. This area is heavily wooded and brushy. Long sleeves and a machete are good things to have. Craig and I marked off a grid and began methodically covering the area. Every chirp from the detector needed to be dug, and we’d brought along a pick and shovel for that purpose.

  My first big find was a bum that was living in the woods—I scared him awake by nearly stepping on him as I walked along, head down. He ran off into the woods like a deer frightened by a bear. He even left his cardboard box behind. I moved it to the side I’d already searched and checked under it—nothing.

  By now it was getting hot, and Craig and I were sweating. We continued to search. An hour or so later, Craig discovered a fifty-five-gallon drum that had been buried, not too long after I discovered an old engine block that had been buried. So went the next few hours until early afternoon. We had decided to wait and eat lunch until after we picked up Dirk, since we figured they probably wouldn’t have fed him on the plane.

  Leaving markers to show the area we’d covered, we grabbed our pick, shovel, and detector and walked back to the rental car. I looked at Craig. His T-shirt was wet
enough to wring out, and his face was covered with dirt. He opened up the trunk of the rental car and tossed in the tools while removing two cans of warm soda. “Tom Clancy’s drinking fine champagne right now,” he said, as he handed one over.

  “Thanks,” I said, as I popped the top.

  Craig walked around and opened the car door—and a wave of heat erupted from inside that dried out my eyeballs. He slid into the driver’s seat and twisted the ignition. A few minutes later, we were cruising toward the airport. I looked at my watch. “We should have just enough time to park and walk inside,” I said.

  Craig slid the rental car into a short-term parking spot, and we walked across the asphalt toward the terminal. Oh, was it ever hot! Then the doors to the terminal slid open, and we walked into the baggage claim area. It must have been forty degrees in there; Craig still swears he could see his breath.

  And then there were the stares coming from the deplaning passengers. Craig seemed oblivious as he walked along, searching for Dirk, but the sight was comical, to say the least. His boots were coated with dirt and mud, his pants and shirt wet with sweat. That wasn’t the funny thing, however—as soon as he’d walked inside, the cold had instantly chilled him, and he was twitching like a Georgia farmer going ice-fishing for the first time. Both his shoulders were pumping up and down, and he was rubbing his hands together like a maniacal scientist intent on destruction. As he walked along, the crowd parted like a tank going through a crystal shop. Then Dirk approached from the other direction, headed for the baggage carousel.

  At first glimpse, he actually stopped and broke out laughing.

  “What in the hell,” he said between laughs, “happened to you two?”

  “It’s those damn Twin Sisters,” I said. “We’ll tell you about it outside.”

  THOSE DAMN TWIN Sisters. Dirk and Craig did more work in 1997 when NUMA was in Galveston searching for the Invincble. This time, they moved outside the prime search area and scanned around some of the nearby homes. When Dirk and Craig work together, it often resembles a bad Abbott and Costello routine. The two feed off each other, passing the time doing poor comedy skits and worse impersonations. It usually starts with an innocuous comment and goes downhill from there.

  And the Twin Sisters send both men into a frenzy.

  “HOT ENOUGH FOR you?” Dirk began, as the pair unloaded the equipment from the trunk of the rental car.

  “All we need is water and some good people,” said Craig.

  “Of course,” replied Dirk, “that’s all that hell needs, as well.”

  Craig hefted a pickax. “Volunteers,” he said. “We need volunteers.”

  Dirk removed the last of the equipment and shut the trunk. “We could run an ad,” he said, as the pair began walking toward the search area.

  “Looking for a few people who enjoy intense boredom interspersed with moments of extreme discomfort. Masochists welcome,” Craig said.

  “Are your hobbies magnetometry, sweating, and digging holes? NUMA needs you.”

  “Did you ever hide stuff from yourself just for the thrill of finding it later? You may be our type.”

  “Will you work for free?” said Dirk.

  Craig laughed. “Will you pay us to suffer?”

  Dirk pointed to a ditch in front of an old frame house. The men began swiping the gradiometer back and forth. Craig watched the readout.

  “Have you ever been so hot that your tongue was sweating?” Dirk said.

  “Ever had to wash your clothes in a motel-room sink?”

  “Because the Laundromat turned you away?” Dirk said.

  “Stop,” said Craig. “Back about a foot.”

  Dirk scanned the area.

  “It’s small,” said Craig. “Continue.”

  “Do you like greasy diner food?” Dirk resumed.

  “Can you exist on a diet of taco chips and warm soda?”

  Dirk looked over at Craig. “This area is magnetically deserted. Let’s move on.”

  “As barren as a whore’s heart.”

  “As deserted as a Vanilla Ice concert,” said Dirk.

  This gives you a pretty good idea of what the first thirty minutes of the search went like. You can expand it for eight hours or so to understand the verbal barrage I’m faced with. When possible, I send the two off alone. If not, Ralph and I banish them to the rear deck of the search boat.

  LATER THAT DAY, Dirk received a good reading inside a horse corral. Craig, and the gift of a case of cold Miller Lite, convinced the owner to let them dig. After digging through the packed soil for most of one hot afternoon, the pair located an old anvil buried six feet deep. So they moved on to the next target. Such is the nature of what we do.

  IN EARLY 2001, Craig flew to Phoenix so we could go over progress on this book. We spent a couple hours going over the Twin Sisters file and have come up with yet another hypothesis. Time will tell on this.

  Both Dirk and Craig did make one request, however: When NUMA returns, they want to schedule it for some month besides August. Wimps.

  PART SEVEN

  Mary Celeste

  I

  Mystery Ship 1872

  WHEN MARY CELESTE EDGED AWAY FROM PIER 50 IN THE East River, there was no reason to think this voyage would be any different from others she had made. Tuesday, the fifth day of November 1872, was cold and gray, but not insufferably so. Just an early-winter New York day like hundreds before and hundreds since. Coats were worn, to be sure, but it was not so cold that a person would turn away from the wind. It was a normal day, with winter fast approaching.

  Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs tugged at his thick goatee, then adjusted the wheel slightly. The current in the East River was running strong and trying to push him back against the dock. He shouted to Albert Richardson of Stockton Springs, Maine, the first mate.

  “Furl the main staysail,” Briggs shouted.

  The wind caught in the fabric and pulled the ship farther into the river.

  Briggs nodded slightly, as if he approved of Mary Celeste’s motion. Briggs was the son of a sea captain from Wareham, Massachusetts. Benjamin was the second of five sons, and all but one of his brothers would make their careers on the sea. His was a childhood of sea tales and letters from faraway ports. In Sippican Village, where the Briggs clan eventually settled, it is said that if you cut a Briggs boy, salt water would flow from the veins. Captain Briggs was as at home on the sea as he was sitting in front of a fireplace in a fine mansion. As part owner of the Mary Celeste, he was anxious to start the voyage.

  He sniffed the air and twisted the wheel slightly.

  Belowdecks in the captain’s quarters, Sarah Elizabeth Briggs, Benjamin’s wife, was tending to their two-year-old daughter, Sophia Matilda. After feeding her and placing her in a small wood-framed playpen in the room, Sarah played a quiet tune on her melodeon until the child fell asleep.

  This was not Mrs. Briggs’s first trip with her husband—but it would be her last.

  The winds were not favorable.

  Mary Celeste was a mile off Staten Island when Briggs gave the order.

  “Heave to,” he shouted to the sailors. “We’ll anchor and await a change in winds.”

  Once his ship was stationary, Briggs went belowdecks to check his cargo. Other than a few crates full of personal items going to a New York art student studying in Italy, his hold was filled with a single cargo: barrels of alcohol bound for Genoa, 1,700 in total, being shipped by Meisser, Ackerman & Company, of 48 Beaver Street, New York City.

  Befitting his Yankee upbringing, Briggs was a cautious man. And although the barrels were tightly plugged and appeared intact, he worried about the possibility of fumes. More than one ship had exploded and burned when carrying such dangerous goods. With both his wife and baby daughter aboard, he wanted to be sure he averted an accident before it happened.

  Satisfied that the cargo was safe, he climbed from the hold and made his way to his cabin. Sarah sat in front of her foot-operated sewing machine, hemming a baby
dress. To one side, in a folding playpen made of lathe-turned walnut, Sophia was standing quietly. When Briggs entered, she cocked her head and stared quizzically.

  “Da,” she squealed.

  Captain Briggs made his way over to the playpen and rubbed his daughter’s hair. Then he turned to Sarah and smiled.

  “The winds are against us,” he said. “We’ll wait here until they turn.”

  “Any idea how long?” Sarah asked easily.

  “The barometer shows changes,” Briggs admitted, “but there is really no way to know for sure.”

  Early on the morning of Thursday, November 7, the winds began to cooperate.

  A pilot guided Mary Celeste from her anchorage into deeper water. Once clear of the shallows and in the Atlantic Ocean, a pilot boat came alongside to retrieve the pilot and take him back to New York City. As was the custom, when the pilot boarded his boat to shore, he carried letters from the ship to post.

  The last communications from the captain and crew of Mary Celeste.

  Benjamin Briggs stood behind the wheel and steered his ship east. There was an inky blackness to the sea that day, combined with an unyielding roughness. It was as if the water consisted of shards of black marble like that used to build a mausoleum. Mary Celeste was on a roller-coaster ride. In front of the bow, the waves rose in a building flood of righteous indignation; then, as the bow broke over the top, the ship headed down with such force that the captain could feel his stomach rising in protest. It was as if they were on a rocking chair that was hitting the wall.

  Two thousand feet down was the bottom. Two thousand miles ahead were the Azores.