Valhalla Rising (20 page)

Misty felt an eerie feeling, more so than the men, knowing they were moving through space where men had strolled and relaxed while women shopped; where children had laughed and run ahead of their parents. She could almost imagine seeing the ghosts stalking the avenue. Most of the passengers had cheated death and were now on their way home, taking memories that would haunt them the rest of their lives.

“Not much to look at,” said Giordino.

Pitt gazed at the desolation. “No shipwreck treasure hunter will ever waste his time and money on this ruin.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it. You know how it goes. Twenty years from now, someone will claim the ship went down with a million dollars in cash in the purser’s safe. Fifty years later, it will be rumored as fifty million dollars in silver. Then in two hundred years, they’ll say she went down with a billion in gold.”

“Intriguing, when you consider more has been spent searching for gold under the seas during the last century than has ever been found.”

“Only the
Edinburgh, Atocha
and
Central America
truly paid off.”

“Exceptions to the rule,” said Pitt.

“There’s more treasure in the sea than mere gold,” said Misty.

“Yes,” Pitt replied, “treasures yet to be discovered that did not come from man.”

They stopped talking as several fallen beams blocked their way. Carefully, Giordino threaded the
Navigator
through the maze, scraping the paint on the sled runners. “Too close,” he sighed. “Now the trick is to get back out.”

“Coming to the site of the chapel,” Misty notified them.

“How can you tell in this mess?” asked Pitt.

“There are still a few features left that I can match on the plans,” she said, her face set in concentration. “Come to a halt in another thirty feet.”

Pitt lay on his stomach and peered through the bottom view port as Giordino covered the distance and then stopped the sub. It hung as if levitating over the space once occupied by the
Emerald Dolphin’s
nondenominational chapel. The only distinguishing evidence that indicated they were in the right area were melted floor mountings in rows that held the pews.

Pitt leaned over the small console that contained the controls for the manipulator arm. With a light touch of the knobs and levers, he began moving the articulated arm downward until it began probing and sifting through the charred debris with its mechanical fingers.

Clearing a ten-foot-square area and finding nothing of interest, he glanced at Giordino. “Move us five feet forward.”

Giordino complied and sat patiently until Pitt asked him to maneuver the sub to another search grid. There was little conversation while each man became engrossed in his own tasks. Thirty minutes later, Pitt had sifted and examined most of the chapel area. As luck would have it, he found what he was looking for in the last grid. A strange-looking substance lay in a tiny twisted lump on the deck. The object or substance, less than six inches in length and two inches wide, did not have the usual heat-fused look to it, but rather it appeared smooth and rounded. Its colors were odd, too. Instead of black or scorched gray, it had a greenish tint to it.

“Time is up,” Giordino warned. “We don’t have much oxygen in reserve to reach the surface safely.”

“I think we may have found what we came for,” said Pitt. “Give me another five minutes.”

Very tenderly, he worked the fingers of the manipulator and slowly eased them under the peculiar material half buried in the ashes. When the object was delicately gripped, Pitt fingered the controls and lifted it free of the incinerated debris. Next he pulled back the mechanical arm and cautiously set the payload into the artifact basket. Only then did he release the fingers and pull back the arm to its locked position.

“Let’s head for home.”

Giordino sent the submersible into a slow, gliding 180-degree turn and aimed it back through the shopping avenue area.

Abruptly, there was a clunk sound and the submersible jerked to a stop. For a moment, neither man spoke. Misty’s hands came together against her breasts in sudden fear. Pitt and Giordino merely looked at each other and briefly dwelled on the possibility that they might be irreversibly trapped for eternity in this hideous place.

“I do believe you struck something,” Pitt said casually.

“It would seem so,” Giordino replied, about as agitated as a three-toed sloth who didn’t like the taste of a leaf he was chewing on.

Pitt tilted his head and stared through the overhead viewport. “It looks like the ballast tank is hung up on a beam.”

“I should have seen it.”

“It wasn’t here when we entered. I suspect it must have fallen after we passed.”

Misty was frightened, and she couldn’t understand how the two men could make light of such a deadly situation. She did not know that Pitt and Giordino had been in far tighter spots than this during their long friendship. Humor was a mechanism to keep their minds clear from creeping thoughts of fear and death.

Giordino gently eased the
Navigator
backward and down. There was a horrendous screeching noise. Then the sub broke free and the eerie void became silent again.

“The tank does not look good,” reported Pitt stoically. “It’s badly dented and looks to be caved in across the top.”

“Since it’s already full of seawater, at least it can’t leak.”

“Luckily, we won’t need it for the trip home.”

Outwardly, Giordino looked as serene as a millpond, but down deep he was greatly relieved when he evaded the maze of hanging debris and piloted the
Navigator
into open water again. As soon as they were clear of the wreck and Giordino dropped the weight for the ascent, Pitt called the surface again. When he received no reply, his eyes became pensive.

“I don’t understand why the communications phone is inoperative,” he said slowly. “There is nothing wrong with the system on this end, and they’re far better equipped to deal with any problem than we are.”

“Murphy’s Law can strike anywhere, anytime,” Giordino said philosophically.

“I don’t think the problem is serious,” said Misty, vastly relieved that they were on their way to the surface and sunshine.

Pitt gave up trying to contact the
Deep Encounter.
He switched off the camera and external lighting systems to conserve battery power in case of an emergency. Then he relaxed in his seat and took up his crossword puzzle again. He soon finished it except for 22 across. Ring-necked Fuzzwort. Then he killed time by taking a nap.

Three hours later, the water began to turn from deep black to deep blue again as the colors of the spectrum returned. Looking through the overhead view port, they could see the sea’s restless surface shimmering and sparkling above. Less than a minute later, the
Abyss Navigator
broke the surface. They were happy to find the swells rolling over at a mere two feet between crest and trough. The submersible, her mass still several feet below the surface, only slightly pitched and rolled.

There were still no communications with the survey ship on the surface. They could not see the ship because all but one of the view ports were below. The top port offered no horizontal vision; the sub’s crew could only look straight up. They waited for the divers to come and attach the lifting cable, but after ten minutes, there was no sign of them. Something was not going according to plan.

“Still no contact,” said Pitt. “No diving team. Have they all fallen asleep?”

“Maybe the ship sank,” Giordino said jokingly between yawns.

“Don’t say that,” Misty scolded him.

Pitt grinned at her. “Not very likely. Certainly not in calm water.”

“Since the waves aren’t sloshing over the top, why not crack the hatch and have a look?”

“A sound proposal,” said Misty. “I’m tired of breathing male body odor.”

“You should have said something sooner,” said Giordino cavalierly. He held up a bottle of new car odor spray and misted the submersible. “Foul air, begone.”

Pitt could not help but laugh as he stood up in the narrow tunnel that traveled through the damaged buoyancy tank. He was concerned that the collision with the beam might have jammed the hatch, but after turning the wheel that snugged it down, it swung back on its hinge with little effort. He then crawled through and stood with his head and shoulders above the hatch, breathing in the fresh sea air and looking around for the survey ship and small boats with the dive recovery team. His eyes made a 360-degree sweep of the horizons.

It would be futile to describe the storm of incredulity and emotion that swept through him then. His reactions ranged from utter bewilderment to pure shock.

The seas were empty.
Deep Encounter
had vanished. It was as though she had never existed.

T
hey came aboard at almost the same moment the
Abyss Navigator
reached the seabed and Pitt phoned in a status report. The crew was going about their routine duties while the scientific team was in the command center monitoring Pitt and Giordino’s investigation of the
Emerald Dolphin’s
wreck. The hijacking came so suddenly and unexpectedly, no one on
Deep Encounter
realized it was happening.

Burch was leaning back in his chair, arms folded across his chest, eyeing the monitors, when Delgado, who was standing next to the radar equipment, noticed a fast-moving blip on the screen. “We have a visitor coming our way out of the northeast.”

“Probably a warship,” said Burch, without turning from the monitors. “We’re a good two miles off the commercial shipping lanes.”

“She doesn’t have the look of a warship,” answered Delgado. “But she appears to be moving at a fairly high rate of speed, and she’s coming straight at us.”

Burch’s eyebrows rose. Without replying to Delgado, he picked up a pair of binoculars and walked out onto the bridge wing. As he stared into the distance through the 7-by-50 lenses, a bright orange-and-white boat increased in size as it cut the water toward
Deep Encounter.
Any hint of apprehension faded. The approaching vessel did not seem to suggest any threat.

“What do you make of her?” asked Delgado.

“An oil company utility work boat, a big one,” replied Burch. “And fast, by the look of the spray flying over her bow. Good for at least thirty knots.”

“I wonder where she came from. There are no oil rigs within a thousand miles.”

“I’m more interested in why she’s interested in us.”

“Does she have a name or a company emblem on the hull?”

“Odd,” Burch said slowly. “The name on her bow and any sign of whatever company owns her are covered over.”

As if prompted, the radio operator joined them on the bridge wing. “I have the skipper of the oil company boat on the ship’s phone,” he said to Burch.

The captain opened a watertight box and switched on the bridge wing speaker. “This is Captain Burch of the NUMA ship
Deep Encounter.
Go ahead.”

“Captain Wheeler of the Mistral Oil Company boat
Pegasus.
Do you have a doctor on board?”

“Affirmative. What is your complication?”

“We have a badly injured man.”

“Come alongside and I’ll send over our ship’s doctor.”

“Better we bring him aboard your ship. We have no medical facilities or supplies.”

Burch looked at Delgado. “You heard?”

“Most odd,” said Delgado.

“My thoughts also,” agreed Burch. “Having no doctor on a work boat is understandable, but no medical supplies? That doesn’t figure.”

Delgado began to step toward the companionway. “I’ll have a crew standing by to hoist a stretcher on board.”

The work boat came to a stop about fifty yards away from the survey ship. A few minutes later, a launch was lowered, with a man covered with blankets on a litter and laid across the seats. Four men also entered the launch, and it was soon rising and dropping in the waves next to the
Deep Encounter’s
hull. Unexpectedly, three of the work boat’s crew jumped on board and helped lift the injured man onto the work deck, rudely pushing the
Deep Encounter’s
crew aside.

Suddenly, the visitors threw back the blankets and snatched up automatic weapons that had been hidden beneath them and turned them on Burch’s survey crew. The man on the stretcher leaped to his feet, took an offered gun and ran toward the starboard stairway leading to the bridge.

Burch and Delgado realized immediately that it was a hijacking. On a commercial ship or private yacht, they’d have rushed to a gun locker and begun passing out weapons. But under international law, survey ships were not allowed to carry arms. They could do nothing but stand helpless until the intruder stepped onto the bridge deck.

The hijacker did not look like a pirate, no peg leg, parrot or eye patch. He had more of an executive air about him. The hair was prematurely gray, the face dark. He was of medium height with a stomach slightly larger than his waist. He wore the appearance of a man comfortable with authority, and he was smartly dressed in a golf shirt and Bermuda shorts. Almost as an act of courtesy, he did not aim the muzzle of his automatic rifle at either Burch or Delgado, but held it casually pointed toward the sky.