Ghost Ship (NUMA Files 12)

“Let’s hope it’s deserted,” Gamay added. “I’d hate to find headhunters living aboard.”

Paul looked around. It really felt as if they’d made landfall. There was nothing man-made in sight. Just a foliage-covered mound in the middle of the Indian Ocean. “Looks like this ship got caught in the Sargasso Sea.”

“Except that this isn’t seaweed,” Gamay said.

“The fact that she’s still afloat tells me she’s basically watertight,” Elena mentioned, “though she’s riding awfully low in the water.”

Paul thought so as well. “I wonder if all this vegetation is weighing her down.”

“Possibly,” Elena said. “Considering the thickness of the vegetation and the soil, it’s probably making her top-heavy. Hopefully, we don’t get any big waves while we’re on board. If she starts to roll, she’ll almost certainly go over.”

To Paul, the discovery of the ship was a bolt of adrenaline. He wanted to know what ship it was and where it had come from. He stepped to the edge and shouted down to Duke. “Throw up the paddles. I think we can use them.”

Duke pulled the FRC’s emergency paddles from a locker and tossed them up one at a time. Paul caught them, handing one to Gamay and keeping one for himself.

“What are we supposed to do with these,” Gamay asked, “row this ship back to civilization?”

“That is not a paddle,” Paul explained, “it’s a shovel. And we are not going to row, we’re going to dig. If this ship is watertight, that suggests all the muck is on the outside, leaving the interior intact. We’re going to find a hatch and go inside.”

“And I can’t get you to rake the leaves at home,” Gamay said.

“Not as much fun.”

“I like it,” Elena said.

“See?” Paul said.

“You’re supposed to be on my side,” Gamay told Elena. “Girl power, remember?”

“Sorry,” Elena said. “This beats sitting around on the Condor in the dark and doing nothing.”

With a smile of satisfaction, Gamay handed Elena the paddle. “Then you can help him dig.”

Paul chuckled and called down to Duke once more. “Stay close. We’re going on a nature walk.”

“Will do,” Duke replied.

With his sense of curiosity near an all-time high, Paul led the party through the foliage toward the highest point of the mounding, an area completely entombed in the thickest of vines. If he was right, the main part of the ship’s superstructure was hidden beneath it.

Pushing between a pair of wild bushes, he stopped. “Look at this,” he said, aiming his flashlight into a tangle of leaves.

A huge spider, the size of a child’s hand, sat in the middle of an ornate web. It had a yellow color to its body and was hardshelled, as opposed to soft and furry like a tarantula. Nearby, a second spider of similar size and color rested on an even larger web. They found three more in a ten-foot radius.

“Ewww,” Elena said quietly. “They’re absolutely disgusting.”

“Did you have to point them out?” Gamay asked. “Now I feel like they’re all over me.” She was turning awkwardly, trying to see if anything was on her back.

Paul had to laugh. He’d always found spiders interesting, though even he had to admit he wouldn’t want the ones they were looking at sneaking into his sleeping bag.

“Come on,” Paul said. He continued forward, careful to avoid the spiders and the thicker parts of the scrub, and they soon arrived at a spot just below the peak of the mound and near the center of the ship’s beam.

With Gamay providing the illumination, Paul and Elena began pulling out the vines and excavating the clumpy soil. The paddles proved to be fairly effective as shovels, and they were soon tunneling at a forty-five-degree angle, gouging a channel deep into the soil, when Gamay put a hand on Paul’s shoulder.

“Stop.”

He looked back at her.

“I thought I heard something.”