Serpent (NUMA Files 1)

"Why do things halfway? Think of it. Everyone who dives on the wreck from now on will think of this as Zavala's Hole."

"I'll pass that honor on to you. How about naming it Austin's Aperture?" .

"How about scouting things out?"

"No time like the present."

"I'll take the point. We'll go nice and slow. Watch out for ceiling cables and collapsed bulkheads. Remember to keep a safe distance apart."

Zavala didn't need to be warned. The Hard Suits resembled space suits worn by the astronauts. As with astronauts floating in free fall, motions had to be deliberate and unexaggerated. Even at slow speed a collision between the thousand pound suits would rattle their teeth.

Austin moved in under Zavala so that the light from his suit pointed straight into the ship. The powerful beam was swallowed by the darkness. He gave his vertical thrusters a short blast, descended feet-first into the garage, then stopped and rotated the suit three hundred sixty degrees. The water was free of loose ends and projections. He gave Zavala the all-clear and watched the bloated yellow figure sink through the blue-green hole and come to a hovering stop.

"This reminds me of the Baja Cantina in Tijuana," Zavala said. Actually it's not as dark."

"We'll stop for shots of Cuervo on the way back," Austin replied. "The ship is ninety feet wide. The cargo would have slid. down to the bottom like Captain McGinty said. Everything is at a ninety-degree angle, so the floor of the garage is actually that vertical wall right behind you. We'll stick close to the wall so as not to become disoriented."

As they descended Austin went down a mental checklist, anticipating obstacles and reactions. While he worked on practical problems and solutions his brain was busy on another, irrational level, probably the survival mechanism that raised the hackles on the unshaven necks of his ancestors. He was hearing Donatelli's voice describing his terrifying descent into the innards of the ship. The old man was wrong, Austin concluded. This was worse than anything Dante could have imagined. Austin would take the fire and brimstone of t

he Inferno any day. At least Dante could see something. Even if it was only demons and the damned.

It was hard to believe now that the decks of this vast empty hulk once throbbed with the diesel power of fifty thousand horses, and more than twelve hundred passengers basked in the ship's sensuous beauty, their needs served by a crew of nearly six hundred. The first person to dive on the Andrea Doria after she slid beneath the Atlantic said the ship seemed still alive, producing an eerie cacophony of groans and creaks, the banging of loose debris, water rushing in and out of doorways. Austin saw only decay, emptiness, and silence, except for the sound of their rebreathers. This huge metal cairn was a haunted place where a man who lingered too long could go mad.

The ship seemed to close in on them, and Austin kept checking his depth gauge. Although they were only about two hundred feet from the surface, it seemed deeper because of the darkness. He looked upward. The bluegreen rectangle that marked the opening was diffused in the murk and eventually might have become invisible if the saturation divers hadn't placed a strobe light on the edge as a beacon. Austin glanced at the blinking pinpoint and felt reassured, then turned his focus to what lay below.

Under their feet solid objects were looming out of the darkness into the circle of illumination cast by their lights. Straight lines and

edges. Mysterious rounded shapes. Tons of debris were jammed into the horizontal space that had once been the starboard bulkhead of the Dona. When the ship was level the garage was covered with heavy metal mesh and catwalks. Now these were vertical as well. Austin and Zavala started a search pattern, moving in parallel lines, back and forth, between the vertical partitions formed by the old floor and ceiling of the garage, the type of search they would execute if they were on the surface looking for a shipwreck. They encountered dangling wires from the old light fixtures but not enough to be dangerous and they were easily avoided.

Their lights caught the glint of metal and glass and vague forms that occasionally resolved into familiar shapes.

"Hey, Kurt, is that a Rolls-Royce I see down there?"

Austin directed his light at the distinctive heavy grille sticking out of the debris.

"Probably. According to the liner's manifest a guy from Miami was shipping his Rolls back from Europe."

"Goes to show it pays to have a Rolls on every continent."

Austin glided over the Rolls and saw part of another car with unconventional sweeping lines.

"That looks like the Chrysler experimental car built by Ghia. Too bad Pitt isn't here. He'd go through hell and high water to add a oneof-a-kind to his collection."

"He'd have to go through a lot of mud, too."

The cars had tumbled on top of one another and now were largely covered by debris and silt. Austin had briefly entertained thoughts of a plan to excavate the debris, but it was an intellectual exercise only. Too dangerous, costly, and time-consuming. Any effort to dig through the cover would stir up a cloud so thick it would take days to settle.

From what Donatelli said of the truck's position, the vehicle should have fallen onto the top of the heap. It should have been visible. Could the old man have been wrong? He was under tremendous stress that night. Maybe the car was in another cargo hold. Austin groaned. It had taken a tremendous effort to cut into the garage. They had neither the time nor resources to try again. His expeditionary force was made up of assets borrowed for only a few days.

Doubts grew the longer they searched. They went over every square yard of visible debris.

"Whatever happened to the plan to refloat this thing with Ping-Pong balls?" Zavala said.

"I don't think there are enough PingPong balls in China for the job. What's your take?"

"I think Angelo Donatelli was one gutsy guy. This must be the biggest sensory deprivation tank in the world. Hard to believe we're still on planet Earth. I feel like a fly in a molasses jar."

"I'm beginning to wonder if the truck is in here at all."