Deep Six

“That’s enough,” she said, her embarrassment growing.

“Are you a party girl?”

“Only when the occasion demands,” she replied, coming back on even keel. “And this is definitely not the occasion.”

He threw up his arms and then let them drop dejectedly. “A sad day for Pitt, a lucky day for NUMA.”

“Why NUMA?”

“The contamination is on dry land. No need for an underwater salvage job. My crew and I can pack up and head for home.”

Her helmet nodded imperceptibly. “A neat sidestep, Mr. Pitt, dropping the problem straight into the Army’s lap.”

“Do they know?” he asked seriously.

“Alaskan Command was alerted seconds after you reported discovering the Pilottown. A chemical warfare disposal team is on its way from the mainland to remove the agent.”

“The world applauds efficiency.”

“It’s not important to you, is it?”

“Of course it’s important,” Pitt said. “But my job is finished, and unless you have another spill and more dead bodies, I’m going home.”

“Talk about a hard-nosed cynic.”

“Say ‘yes.’ “

Thrust, parry, lunge. He caught her on an exposed flank. She felt trapped, impaled, and was a

The men in the hold stopped their work amid enough poison to kill half the earth’s population and clapped muted gloves together, cheering and whistling into their transmitters. She suddenly realized that her stock had shot up on the Dow Jones. Men admired a woman who could ramrod a dirty job and not be a bitch.

Later, Dover found Pitt thoughtfully studying a small open hatchway, shining his flashlight inside. The glow diminished into the darkness within, reflecting on dull sparkles on the oil-slicked water rippling from the cargo hold.

“Got something in mind?” Dover asked.

“Thought I’d do a little exploring,” Pitt answered.

“You won’t get far in there.”

“Where does it lead?”

“Into the shaft tu

Pitt swung his light up the forward bulkhead until it spotlighted a small hatch at the top of a ladder. “How about that one?”

“Should open into cargo hold four.”

Pitt merely nodded and began scaling the rusty rungs of the ladder, closely followed by Dover. He muscled the dog latches securing the hatch, swung it open and clambered down into the next hold, again followed by Dover. A quick traverse of their lights told them it was bone empty.

“The ship must have been traveling in ballast,” Pitt speculated out loud.

“It would appear so,” said Dover.

“Now where?”

“Up one more ladder to the alleyway that runs between the fresh water tanks into the ship’s storerooms.”

Slowly they made their way through the bowels of the Pilottown, feeling like gravediggers probing a cemetery at midnight. Around every corner they half expected to find the skeletons of the crew. But there were no bones. The crew’s living quarters should have looked like an a

The food lockers were bare. No dishes or cups lined the shelves of the crew mess. Even the toilets lacked paper. Fire extinguishers, door latches, furnishings, anything that could be unbolted or was of the slightest value was gone.

“Mighty peculiar,” muttered Dover.

“My thought too,” Pitt said. “She’s been systematically stripped.”

“Scavengers must have boarded and carried away everything during the years she was adrift.”

“Scavengers leave a mess,” Pitt disagreed. “Whoever was behind this job had a fetish for neatness.”

It was an eerie trip. Their shadows flitted on the dark walls of the alleyways and followed alongside the silent and abandoned machinery. Pitt felt a longing to see the sky again.

“Incredible,” mumbled Dover, still awed by what they’d found, or rather not found. “They even removed all the valves and gauges.”

“If I was a gambling man,” said Pitt thoughtfully, “I’d bet we’ve stumbled on an insurance scam.”

“Wouldn’t be the first ship that was posted missing for a Lloyd’s of London payday,” Dover said.

“You told me the crew claimed they abandoned the Pilottown in a storm. They abandoned her all right, but they left nothing but a barren, worthless shell.”

“Easy enough to check out,” said Dover. “Two ways to scuttle a ship at sea. Open the sea cocks and let her flood, or blow out the bottom with explosive charges.”

“How would you do it?”

“Flooding through the sea cocks could take twenty-four hours or more. Time enough for a passing ship to investigate. I opt for the charges. Quick and dirty; put her on the seafloor in a matter of minutes.”

“Something must have prevented the explosives from detonating.”

“It’s only a theory.”

“Next question,” Pitt persisted. “Where would you lay them?”

“Cargo holds, engine room, most any place against the hull plates so long as it was below the waterline.”

“No sign of charges in the after holds,” said Pitt. “That leaves the engine room and the forward cargo holds.”

“We’ve come this far,” Dover said. “We might as well finish the job.”

“Faster if we split up. I’ll search the engine room. You know your way around the ship better than I do—”

“The forward cargo holds it is,” Dover said, anticipating him.

The big Coast Guardsman started up a companion-way, whistling the Notre Dame fight song under his breath. His bearlike gait and hulking build, silhouetted by the wavering flashlight in his hand, grew smaller and finally faded.

Pitt began probing around the maze of steam pipes leading from the obsolete old steam reciprocating engines and boilers. The walkway gratings over the machinery were nearly eaten through by rust, and he treaded lightly. The engine room seemed to come alive in his imagination — creaks and moans, murmurings drifting out of the ventilators, whispering sounds.

He found a pair of sea cocks. Their handwheels were frozen in the closed position.

So much for the sea-cock theory, he thought.

An icy chill crept up the back of Pitt’s neck and spread throughout his body, and he realized the batteries operating the heater in his suit were nearly drained. He switched off the light for a moment. The pure blackness nearly smothered him. He flicked it on again and quickly swept the beam around as if he expected to see a specter of the crew reaching out for him. Only there were no specters. Nothing except the dank metal walls and the worn machinery. He could have sworn he felt the grating shudder as if the engines looming above him were starting up.

Pitt shook his head to purge the phantoms in his mind and methodically began searching the sides of the hull, crawling between pumps and asbestos-covered pipes that led into the darkness and nowhere. He fell down a ladder into six feet of greasy water. He struggled back up, out of the seeming clutches of the dead and evil and ugly bilge, his suit now black with oil. Out of breath, he hung there a minute, making a conscious effort to relax.

It was then he noticed an object dimly outlined in the farthest reach of the light beam. A corroded aluminum canister about the size of a five-gallon gas can was wired to a beam welded on the i

Sweat was pouring from his body but he was shivering from the cold. He left the explosive charge where he found it and climbed back up the ladder. Then he began inspecting the engines and boilers.