The Bone Hunters (15 page)

Dusenberry had forgotten about Yemen.

“And the third one?” he asked.

“According to the after-action report, the third freighter was sunk a few miles north of a place called Dunmore Town on Harbour Island off North Eleuthera,” said Macaulay.

“I've heard of Dunmore Town,” said Dusenberry. “A lot of American Tories who sided with the British during the Revolutionary War ended up there when they thought they might get hanged.”

“Unfortunately, the U-boat captain logged no specific longitude or latitude coordinates to mark the location,” said Tommy. “In his after-action report, he noted that the ocean depth at the sinking was forty-two meters. There was one other reference to its location. In the margin, he wrote the words
Teufels Rückgrat.
”

He gave Dusenberry a lingering smile.

“All right, I give up,” said Dusenberry.

“The Devil's Backbone,” said Tommy. “It's a reef that runs east along the coast of North Eleuthera from the old pirate stronghold of Spanish Wells. One odd thing . . . the
Germans were very meticulous about record-keeping. We found the captains' logs from every other U-boat except this one.”

“Is it important?” asked Dusenberry.

“No way to know,” said Tommy. “It's possible the submarine might have picked up a survivor or two who could shed more light on what happened to the crate, or maybe even the crate itself if they were told by a survivor it was valuable.”

“I have asked Mr. Somervell and Ms. Corcoran to try to track it down,” said Barnaby.

“What else will you need?” asked Dusenberry. “How can I help?”

“At this point, we should probably do an informal recon after creating a plausible cover story,” said Macaulay. “If you send a military team down there now, it will only arouse questions and interest from the locals. Word would spread fast. I'm putting together a list of things we'll need to start the search . . . a boat, diving equipment . . .”

Dusenberry's phone began to chirp again. “Just keep me abreast,” he said, trying to rebutton his vest. “Anything you need I'll make sure you get.”

He was at the door when he turned and said, “One final question . . . wouldn't the fossils have dissolved or disintegrated in the sea by now along with the bones of the ship's crew?”

“According to the records at the Peking Union Medical College, they were carefully packed in airtight glass containers surrounded by oilcloth and straw,” said Barnaby. “Knowing they were of significant value, we can assume Captain DeVries would have made sure the red one
was stowed securely. We can only hope the crate didn't take a direct hit.”

28 May

Aboard
Island Time

Devil's Backbone

North Eleuthera

Bahamas

Dawn found Steve and Lexy arriving at the end of the first pattern in the search grid along the reefs north of Harbour Island. Sipping coffee from a white ceramic mug, he sat at the steering console and watched as a garish orange sun climbed out of a calm sapphire sea. With its sudden intense glare, Macaulay had to squint to read the monitors on the backlit LCD display of the ultrasonic ocean depth meter and the side-scan sonar rig.

Completing the projected run, he steered north for one hundred meters and then punched the reverse westerly heading into the navigation system of the Regal Commodore thirty-two-foot cruiser.
Island Time
settled onto the reciprocal course at a speed of twelve knots.

Lexy emerged from the cabin galley with a turkey and bacon sandwich and more coffee. Both of them had shed the clothing of official Washington. Macaulay wore only khaki cargo shorts. Lexy's white string bikini offset her quickly developing tan.

He glanced off to starboard. To the south, he could
see white surf breaking onto a deserted white sand beach on North Eleuthera. Closer to shore, he saw patches of dark green where the jagged coral reef lay just underneath the surface.

The search grid covered a distance along the reef of almost seven miles. The width of the same grid was a fraction of that. A half mile offshore, the depth dropped well beyond the forty-two meters charted by the U-boat captain in March 1942. Close in, the depth was too shallow, less than a hundred feet.

It made their search for the final resting place of the
Prins Willem
a little easier. Scores of ships had come to grief on the Devil's Backbone from the times of the Spanish conquests. It would have been impossible to find the
Prins Willem
in that graveyard if she had ground herself to death on the reef itself. But if the U-boat captain had been correct in his report that she was lying at about one hundred thirty feet, her grave would almost certainly be a lonely one.

Used in conjunction with the boat's side-scan sonar, the depth meter's transceiver sensors were accurate to within a half percentage point and recorded the data transmissions as soon as they were received off the bottom. Coordinated with the GPS data that was being fed simultaneously into the laptop computer monitored by Lexy in the galley below, they would review the findings after completing the grid and come back to begin a sophisticated search of the bottom in every section that had the proper depth.

For further protective coloring from watchers onshore, Macaulay had set up two trolling lines on the
boat's outriggers and released them astern with sidewinder lures from the rods and PENN Fathom Lever Drag reels that came with the boat.

It had been a busy four days for Macaulay since their meeting at the situation room in the White House. He had quickly sketched out a plan for how to undertake the search without attracting attention. Barnaby had given his approval and Macaulay had flown down to Fort Lauderdale that same day. He went straight to the boat brokerage owned by his old friend Chris Kimball.

Among the pilots in the F-16 squadron once commanded by Macaulay, Chris had been known as the Kingfish, largely from his prowess with women but also for his love of boats and fishing. After his retirement, he had indulged his second passion by starting a charter boat company. Most important, Macaulay knew he could trust him with his life.

Chris had changed little since their days together in the squadron. He had stayed in great shape, and his thick tousled hair had yet to turn gray. In his paneled office overlooking the harbor, Macaulay confided to him that he was organizing an effort to find a sunken ship in the Bahamas, not for treasure purposes, but because it was important to the country. It needed to be done as quickly and inconspicuously as possible, he added.

Macaulay said he needed two boats, a smaller one to conduct the preliminary search and a bigger one for their team to live aboard in order to reduce informal contact with the local population.

“What is the budget?” asked Kimball.

“Whatever we need,” said Macaulay. “But it's taxpayer's money . . . fair margins.”

For the mother ship, Chris recommended a seventy-two-foot Hatteras Sports Fisherman called
Trader's Bluff
that was owned by a second-tier hedge fund millionaire from Philadelphia and immediately available for charter.

“It will confirm the idea that you're in the Bahamas to fish and it won't stand out against the grandiose yachts that usually cruise there. We can moor it right in the harbor at Dunmore Town.”

“We?” asked Macaulay.

“I'm coming with you, skipper,” said Chris with the same tone of admiration he had always displayed toward Macaulay. “Sounds like it could be fun.”

“It could really be dangerous, Chris,” said Macaulay. “Three of us are already being hunted and I can't even tell you why it's important.”

“If you're doing it, I know it's important. Besides, I'm known there as a serious fisherman,” said Kimball. “I can get any supplies you need without raising suspicion.”

For the smaller search boat, he recommended a thirty-two-foot 1989 Regal Commodore called
Island Time
that was powered by twin MerCruiser four-hundred-and-fifty-four-horsepower engines with Bravo outdrives.

“It cruises at twenty-four knots and can top thirty-five,” said Chris. “The boat is seaworthy and equipped with the latest electronics. The guy who owns it has been all over the Bahamas for the last twenty years, so the boat's familiar there.”

Macaulay gave him a list of things to install in it, including an ultrasonic depth meter, side-scan sonar, a set of marine salvage airbags, and a portable high-pressure compressor for recharging scuba tanks.

“We'll need enough diving gear for at least four.”

“I'll have the Commodore and the Hatteras waiting for you in Nassau,” said Chris Kimball. “From there it's only fifty miles to the harbor at Dunmore Town. I'll stock the Hatteras and arrange all the permits and mooring reservations.”

Macaulay handed him the credit card supplied by Dusenberry's office.

“Who is Ross Lockridge?” asked Kimball.

“You're looking at him,” said Macaulay, “at least until this thing is over. My team will be arriving in Nassau in two days. There are three of us right now, another man and a woman. Aside from you, we won't need anyone else to crew for us. I've also got an engine man and diver I want to bring in on this, the best guy with motors I've ever seen.”

From Kimball's office, Macaulay put in a call to Tom Hurdnut's Flying Service in Belize. After reaching him, he asked if there was any chance Carlos might be available to help him with a project he was working on.

“I had to lay him off, Steve,” said Hurdnut. “After you left, he began spending most of his time drinking at Lana's. I couldn't rely on him. I'm not sure you can anymore either.”

Macaulay tracked Carlos down at the bar.

“He's right here, Steve,” said Lana. “Are you coming back?”

“Not any time soon,” said Macaulay. “Can you put him on?”

“Where you be, Steef?” Carlos said in his fractured English.

“I might have a job for you,” he said, “Keeping engines maintained, doing some diving.”

“You be think of me?”

“Yeah,” said Macaulay, “I be think of you.”

Chris Kimball was watching him across his desk with a confused grin on his face.

“You no be getting drunk,” Macaulay added.

“I stay sober, Steef,” said Carlos. “There any clean pussy where we be going?”

Macaulay asked him to put Lana back on the line.

“Can you get him on the next flight to Miami?” he asked. “I'll wire the money right away.”

“May I come too, Steve?” she asked, her voice as husky as he remembered.

He chuckled and said, “Not this time, Lana. Trust me, you wouldn't like this one.”

•   •   •

As the first day of the preliminary search wound down off the Devil's Backbone, Macaulay figured they had already covered nearly a fifth of the grid. There were several target areas north of the reef that fit the depth requirements and looked promising.

“Let's do one more run before the light goes,” he called down to Lexy. “We have to get through the reef passage and back to Dunmore Town before dark.”

An hour later, Lexy was the first to see the fast-approaching thunderheads. She shouted to him over the engine noise. Macaulay turned from the steering console to look back. The storm front looked like a gigantic mass of greasy black smoke. It almost filled the sky to the west. Inside it, he saw pale blue flashes of lightning.

Hoping to outrace the squall, he gunned the engines and headed for the narrow gap in the reef a mile farther on that they needed to clear in order to get back to Dunmore Town. Off to port, he saw the small group of uninhabited islets that extended out from the edge of Hawk Point at the tip of North Eleuthera.

Lexy stood in the stern, watching as the front gained on them, darkening the surface of the sea as it came. The first rush of wind hit them as Macaulay was turning south. The gust was at least forty miles an hour and the boat heeled over sickeningly in its face, almost launching Lexy over the side. She could hear the clatter and crash of loose pots and pans in the galley as she regained her feet and held on.

A heavy curtain of slashing rain followed just behind the wind, blotting out Macaulay's visibility. Through the rain-streaked windshield, he could no longer see the narrow gap in the reef a half mile ahead of them. He couldn't see more than ten feet off the bow. It would be suicidal to try to make it through as long as the storm lasted.

He turned on his running lights as the boat lurched and reeled through the tossing sea. Remembering the small islets to the north, he turned north away from the route along the Devil's Backbone. Slowing the engine to fifteen knots, he continued on a northerly course.

He looked down to scan the 3-D display on the Furuno radar monitor. With each sweep of the antenna, he saw the islets grow larger directly ahead of him, no more than a quarter mile away. There were four of them, and one appeared to have a tiny cove or inlet on its eastern edge that could provide additional protection from the wind. He estimated it was now gusting fifty.

The cruiser was pitching and rolling wildly as he navigated through the gap between the first two islets. It was the next one that had the small inlet or cove. Flying blind with only the radar monitor as a guide, he turned into it and slowed the throttle until the boat was barely making headway in the roiling waves.

According to the depth meter, there was still four feet of water under the hull as he continued to inch forward. In a brief flash of lightning, he saw that instead of sandy beach, the land mass ahead of them was covered with a thicket of mangroves. They appeared to grow right down to the water's edge.

The mangroves had been there a long time and were tall enough to provide a small measure of protection from the wind. He ran forward along the upper deck and carefully set the Danforth anchor off the bow before tying it off. There was a twenty-pound mushroom anchor in the stern locker, and he set it off the stern.

Night descended with total blackness.