Deep Six

29

Six hours later and twelve miles downriver, target number seventeen crept across the recording screen of the Klein High Resolution Sonar. It lay in 109 feet of water between Persimmon and Mathias points directly opposite Popes Creek and two miles above the Potomac River Bridge.

“Dimensions?” Pitt asked the sonor operator.

“Approximately thirty-six meters long by seven meters wide.”

“What kind of size are we looking for?” asked Giordino.

“The Eagle has an overall length of a hundred and ten feet with a twenty-foot beam,” Pitt replied.

“That matches,” Giordino said, mentally juggling meters to feet.

“I think we’ve got her,” Pitt said as he examined the configurations revealed by the sidescan sonar. “Let’s make another pass — this time about twenty meters to starboard — and throw out a buoy.”

Sandecker, who was standing outside on the after deck keeping an eye on the sensor cable, leaned into the wheelhouse. “Got something?”

Pitt nodded. “A prime contact.”

“Going to check it out?”

“After we drop a buoy, Al and I’ll go down for a look.”

Sandecker stared at the weathered deck and said nothing. Then he turned and walked back to the stern, where he helped Giordino hoist a fifty-pound lead weight attached to a bright orange buoy onto the Hoki Jamoki’s bulwark.

Pitt took the helm and brought the boat about. When the target began to raise on the depth sounder, he shouted, “Now!”

The buoy was thrown overboard as the boat slowed. One of the engineers moved to the bow and lowered the anchor. The Hoki Jamoki drifted to a stop with her stern pointed downstream.

“Too bad you didn’t include an underwater TV camera,” said Sandecker as he helped Pitt into his dive gear. “You could have saved yourself a trip.”

“A wasted effort,” Pitt said. “Visibility is measured in inches down there.”

“The current is ru

“When we begin our ascent to the surface, it will carry us astern. Better throw out a hundred-yard lifeline on a floating buoy to pull us aboard.”

Giordino tightened his weight belt and flashed a jaunty grin. “Ready when you are.”

Sandecker gripped Pitt on the shoulder. “Mind what I said about entering the wreck.”

“I’ll try not to look too hard,” Pitt said flatly.

Before the admiral could reply, Pitt adjusted his face mask over his eyes and dropped backwards into the river.

The water closed over him and the sun diffused into a greenish orange blur. The current pulled at his body and he had to swim on a diagonal course against it until he found the buoy. He reached out and clutched the line and stared downward. Less than three feet away the white nylon braid faded into the opaque murk.

Using the line as a guide and a support, Pitt slipped into the depths of the Potomac. Tiny filaments of vegetation and fine particles of sediment swept past his face mask. He switched on his dive light, but the dim beam only added a few inches to his field of vision. He paused to work his jaws and equalize the growing pressure within his ear canals.

The density increased as he dove deeper. Then suddenly, as if he’d passed through a door, the water temperature dropped by ten degrees and visibility stretched to almost ten feet. The colder layer acted as a cushion pushing against the warm current above. The bottom appeared and Pitt discerned the shadowy outline of a boat off to his right. He turned and gestured to Giordino, who gave an affirmative nod of his head.

As though growing out of a fog, the superstructure of the Eagle slowly took on shape. She lay like a lifeless animal, alone in haunted silence and watery gloom.

Pitt swam around one side of the hull while Giordino kicked around the other. The yacht was sitting perfectly upright with no indication of list. Except for a thin coating of algae that was forming on her white paint, she looked as pristine as when she rode the surface.

They met at the stern, and Pitt wrote on his message board, “Any damage?”

Giordino wrote back, “None.”

Then they slowly worked their way over the decks, past the darkened windows of the staterooms and up to the bridge. There was nothing to suggest death or tragedy. They probed their lights through the bridge windows into the black interior, but all they saw was eerie desolation. Pitt noted that the engine-room telegraph read ALL STOP.

He hesitated for a brief moment and wrote a new message on his board: “I’m going in.”

Giordino’s eyes glistened under the face-mask lens and he scrawled back, “I’m with you.”

Out of habit they checked their air gauges. There was enough time left for another twelve minutes of diving. Pitt tried the door to the wheelhouse. His heart squeezed within his chest. Even with Giordino at his side, the apprehension was oppressive. The latch turned and he pushed the door open. Taking a deep breath, Pitt swam inside.

The brass gave off a dull gleam under the dive lights. Pitt was curious at the barren look about the room. Nothing was out of place. The floor was clean of any spilled debris. It reminded him of the Pilottown.

Seeing nothing of interest, they threaded their way down a stairway into the lounge area of the deckhouse. In the fluid darkness the large enclosure seemed to yawn into infinity. Everywhere was the same strange neatness. Giordino aimed his light upward. The overhead beams and mahogany paneling had a stark, naked appearance. Then Pitt realized what was wrong. The ceiling should have been littered with objects that float. Everything that might have drifted to the surface and washed ashore must have been removed.

Accompanied by the gurgle of their escaping air bubbles, they glided through the passageway separating the staterooms. The same neat look was everywhere; even the beds and mattresses had been stripped. Their lights darted amid the furniture securely bolted to the carpeted deck. Pitt checked the bathrooms as Giordino probed the closets. By the time they reached the crew’s quarters, they only had seven minutes of air left. Communicating briefly with hand signals, they divided up, Giordino searching the galley and storerooms while Pitt took the engine room.

He found the hatch cover over the engine room locked and bolted. Without a second of lost motion, he quickly removed his dive knife from its leg sheath and pried out the pins in the hinges. The hatch cover, released from its mountings and thrust upward by its buoyancy, sailed past him.

And so did a bloated corpse that burst through the open hatch like a jack-in-the-box.

30

PITT REELED BACKWARD into a bulkhead and watched numbly as an unearthly parade of floating debris and bodies erupted from the engine room. They drifted up to the ceiling, where they hung in grotesque postures like trapped balloons. Though the internal gases had begun to expand, the flesh had not yet started to decompose. Sightless eyes bulged beneath strands of hair that wavered from the disturbance in the water.

Pitt struggled to fight off the grip of shock and revulsion, hardening his mind for the repugnant job he could not leave undone. With creeping nausea merged with cold fear he snaked through the hatch into the engine room.

His eyes were met with a charnel house of death. Bedding, clothing from half-open suitcases, pillows and cushions, anything buoyant enough to float, mingled between a crush of bodies. The scene was a nightmare that could never be imagined or remotely duplicated by a Hollywood horror film.

Most of the corpses wore white Coast Guard uniforms that added to their ghostly appearance. Several had on ordinary work clothes. None showed signs of injury or wounds.

He spent two minutes, no more, in there, cringing when a lifeless hand brushed across his arm or a white expressionless face drifted inches in front of his face mask. He could have sworn they were all staring at him, begging for something that was not his to give. One was dressed differently from the others, in a knit sweater covered by a stylish raincoat. Pitt swiftly rifled through the dead man’s pockets.