Fire Ice (NUMA Files 3)

"What do we do now?" Austin said.

Murphy gave them his big-toothed grin. "We go have some coffee and doughnuts."

21

THE UNDERSEA VEHICLE moved back and forth above the ocean floor in a lawn-mowing pattern, its path on the ocean floor displayed on the computer screen. When its task was finished, the UUV homed in on a third transducer like a puppy who'd heard the word bone. The vehicle nosed up to the side of the ship, where it was snagged in a special pickup rack and lifted back on deck. Murphy hooked up a modem and transferred all the data from the dripping vehicle to his laptop computer. Then he disconnected the computer.

Tucking the laptop under his arm, Murphy led the way to the conference room, where he set the laptop down on a table and connected it to a large-screen monitor. The computer's SeaSone software began to generate high-resolution sonar images in slow motion onto the screen, and the pictures of the seafloor as recorded by the UUV flowed down from the top of the monitor like twin waterfalls. Latitude, longitude and position were displayed to the right of the screen. Murphy adjusted the screen's color control to a yellow-brown that was easy on the eyes.

The seafloor was largely unmarked. Occasionally, a boulder showed up or dark and light patches indicated differences in sediment. Halfway through its fourth track, the sonar caught two straight lines joined at an angle. All eyes were focused on the monitor as the vehicle finished the track, turned and came back. Murphy froze the picture.

"Bingo!" he said. The unmistakable image of a ship stood out in sharp relief. With a click of the computer mouse, Murphy zoomed in the picture. The darks and lights became doors, hatches and portholes. The computer compiled the ship's measurements. "She's two hundred fifty feet long," Murphy said.

Austin pointed to a shadow on the hull. "Can you zoom in on that section?"

Murphy obliged with a click of the mouse, and the section Austin had noticed appeared as a small box to one side of the screen. The scientist played around with the resolution until the hole in the side of the hull near the waterline was clearly visible.

He ran off a full-color copy of the survey area, showing the target hits, and sprea

d it out on a table. "She's at four hundred fifty feet," he said. "Here's where the three-hundred-foot bottom begins to fall away into a canyon. The ship is on the slope, just past the lip of the cut. We're lucky. A few hundred feet farther and the wreck would have been lost forever from metal deterioration."

"Good job, Murphy," Captain Atwood said. Turning to the others, he said, "I've got a crew ready to launch an ROV from the moon pool." A robotic vehicle. They all moved to a small room that contained the control consoles for vehicles operating out of the moon pool. Gesturing toward a computer console, the captain said to Gunn, "Would you care to handle the controls, Commander?"

Gunn's academic demeanor cloaked a personality that enjoyed action, and he had been charming in his role as a by-stander since boarding the ship. He was an experienced hand at running an ROV and needed no prodding. "I'd like that very much. Thank you, Captain."

"Whenever you're ready."

Gunn sat behind the control console and familiarized himself with the instruments and the feel of the joystick that controlled the ROV. Then he grinned and rubbed his hands together. "Drop 'er in."

The captain unclipped a small radio from his belt and gave a command. A moment later, the screen flickered to life and projected a view of the cavernous moon pool through the video camera in the nose of the ROV. The camera seemed to flood as the ROV was lowered into the pool. A diver wearing a wet suit came into view as he uncoupled the line attached to the lifting crane. Then he was gone, replaced by a cloud of bubbles and the deepening blue of the sea, as the ROV sank slowly beneath the open bottom of the ship.

A thousand-foot Kevlar-jacketed tether connected the Benthos Stingray ROV to the ship. The tether transmitted Gunn's commands to the operating system and relayed the video picture back to the screen. The Argo carried larger and more powerful ROVs, but after hearing the NR-1 story, the captain had thought they would need a smaller vehicle that could be maneuvered into tight spaces. The vehicle was the size and shape of a large suitcase. Although the ROV was relatively small, it carried video and digital cameras and a manipulator arm.

Moving the joystick with a skilled hand, Gunn angled the ROV into a long dive. The vehicle used the navigational net established for the UUV to find its way directly to the target. Color faded from the water, as each descending fathom took the ROV farther from the dappled surface light. Gunn switched on the twin 150-watt quartz halogen lights, but even their powerful beams were swallowed by the thickening gloom.

The ROV smoothly descended to three hundred feet, then leveled out a few yards above the ocean floor. The vehicle bucked a slight bottom current that kept its speed under a knot as it moved forward above the black mud. Then the bottom dropped away and the ROV soared over the lip of the undersea canyon so suddenly that everyone in the room felt a slight wave of queasiness. Gunn nosed the ROV downward, keeping the vehicle parallel to the sharp slope.

The ROV's side-scan sonar painted the target on a separate monitor until it was close enough for visual inspection. Gunn goosed the vertical thrusters, and the vehicle rose slowly above the vessel.

The ship lay at an angle on the sloping side of the canyon, the bottom section of hull embedded in mud. The ROV descended several yards and moved alongside the hulk at main-deck level, past a row of portholes, including some that were still open. Barnacles covered most of the ship and heightened its spectral aspect. Reddish patches of antifouling paint peeked out here and there. The wooden wheelhouse had disintegrated and the decks had rotted away. The lifeboat davits were empty, and wire shrouds hung with seaweed. A pile of rusty debris was all that remained of the collapsed funnel.

The ship was a metal cadaver, useless except for the schools of fish that nosed through passageways where humans had once walked. To Austin, who watched the screen with an expression of fascination on his bronzed features, this sad and lifeless hunk of rusty metal was a living thing. Although there were no hands to close the hatches forced open by the pressure of escaping air, Austin could almost hear the creak of the booms and the throbbing engine as the ship plowed through the seas. In his mind's eye, he pictured the helmsman standing with feet braced on a wooden grating, hands on the wheel while crewmen went about their business on deck or fought the inevitable boredom of shipboard life.

Austin asked Gunn to steer the ROV around to the stem. As Ensign Kreisman described it, the hull was covered with growth that hid the ship's markings. Gunn poked the vehicle into several nooks and crannies, hoping to come across a manufacturer's metal plate, but they found nothing.

Austin turned to Gamay. "What's our resident nautical archaeologist have to say about this old gal?"

Gamay pinched her chin in thought as she stared at the ghostly images on the glowing screen.

"My specialty was Greek and Roman wooden ships, and if you asked me to ID a bireme or a trireme I might be of more help. I'll venture a few guesses, though." The camera was moving along the midships section, where the rusty steel plating had buckled and was clear of barnacles. "Those are riveted steel plates. By the 1940s, shipbuilders had switched to welding. The booms indicate that she's probably a cargo ship. She's an old-timer, judging from her lines, maybe built in the late eighteen-hundreds or around the turn of the century."

Austin asked Gunn to move the ROV around to the damaged side. The ship leaned downhill, and from this angle it looked as if it could come crashing over at any second. Gunn brought the ROV straight in until the hole filled almost the entire screen. The lights probing the ship's innards picked out twisted pipes and steel columns.

"Damage assessment, Rudi?" Austin said.

"From the way those edges are curled, I'd say a projectile hit the engine room. Too high for a torpedo. Probably a shell from a big gun."

"Who would sink a harmless old freighter?" Zavala asked.