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He broke stride when he spotted Pitt and Be
“Greetings, Kemosabe,” he said to Pitt, “welcome back to the salt air. You have a good flight?”
“Quite. The Vice President fixed it so we could hop a Navy Gulfstream that was flying a couple of admirals to Coronado.”
“And I always end up on a Greyhound bus.” Giordino gazed at Be
“A
“I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Giordino.”
“Please, call me Al.” He rattled the tanks. “We can shake hands later.”
“I don’t think we’ll need those on this hunt,” Pitt said. “The water will likely be too deep.”
“Rudi only said that we had an underwater recovery job. He didn’t say what it was.”
“That’s because he doesn’t know. Is he aboard?”
“Yes. We all just returned from the funeral this morning.”
“Buddy Martin?”
Giordino nodded. Martin, the Drake’s captain, had died unexpectedly from a sudden illness.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it in time,” Pitt said. “Buddy was a man of true loyalty and a dear pal. He’ll be sorely missed.”
“He bled turquoise,” Giordino said, referring to the color all NUMA craft were painted. “But now Rudi has taken temporary command of the ship. A regular Captain Bligh, if you ask me.”
Pitt turned to A
“You’ll find him in the lab,” Al said, “tending to his flock of deepwater fish.”
Pitt and A
They entered one of the labs and found it nearly pitch-black. With the lights off and the windows sealed, the only illumination was cast by a few tiny blue bulbs overhead. Pitt figured the lab’s air-conditioning unit must have been working nonstop as the temperature felt like the low fifties.
“Keep the door closed, please.”
As their eyes adjusted, they spotted the voice’s owner, a thin man in a jacket hunched over a large tank that almost filled the room. He wore a set of night vision goggles and was staring intently into the tank.
“Spying on the mating habits of the grunion again, Rudi?” Pitt asked.
Recognizing the voice, the man bolted upright and spun to greet the intruders.
“Dirk, I didn’t know it was you.” Gu
Pitt introduced Gu
“Why the cold, dark room?” she asked.
“Come take a look.” Gu
He guided her to the edge of the tank, where she slipped on the goggles and peered inside. A half dozen small fish swam in a lazy circle, glowing blue under the augmented light. But they were unlike any fish A
“What are those things? They’re hideous.”
“Rudi’s pet creatures of the deep,” Pitt said.
“Everma
“They look like they’d eat you out of house and home.”
“Despite their appearance, we believe they are non-predatory. They’re actually quite docile. They don’t seem interested in eating other fish, so we think they may be scavengers.”
She shook her head. “I’m still not going to stick my hand in the tank.”
“Don’t worry,” Pitt said, “your cabin door has a lock on it, in case they grow legs in the night.”
“They’re no worse than a pet goldfish,” Gu
“We’ll leave them in your care,” Pitt said. “Rudi, how soon can we shove off?”
Gu
“Then let’s get under way,” Pitt said. “I’m curious to find out where A
TRUE TO HIS WORD, Gu
“Here’s the coordinates where the two bodies were picked up. Apparently they were within sight of each other.”
“That may be a good indication the currents didn’t get too daffy with them,” Giordino said.
Pitt typed the coordinates into the Drake’s navigation system, which plotted the position as a triangle on the digital map display. It lay just beyond a small rocky island grouping off the Mexican coast called the Coronados.
“The currents run southerly along the coast,” Pitt said, “so that would likely define a lower boundary from which to conduct the search.”
“The coroner’s report placed their time of death between eight and ten hours earlier,” A
“That gives us something to work with.” Pitt drew a box on the map with a cursor. “We’ll start with a ten-mile-square grid, working north of the discovery point, and expand beyond that as necessary.”
A
Pitt tilted his head at Gu
“I found a local barge and crane that’s waiting on call. It’ll come to the site once we find her. I guess I should have asked, but how big a boat are we looking for?”
A
“We’ll get her up.” Gu
Two hours later, they reached the site where a passing sailboat had found the bodies of Heiland and his assistant Ma
A
“What will the boat look like?”
“We’re ru