Raise the Titanic! (Dirk Pitt 4)

Pitt stared at the model of the Bomberger. She was a new vessel, constructed especially for deep-water salvage. "Tell her captain to close up to within one mile."

Giordino nodded toward the bald radio operator, who was moored securely to the slanting deck in front of his equipment. "You heard the man, Curly. Tell the Bomberger to come up to one mile astern."

"How about the supply ships?" Pitt asked.

"No problem there. This weather is duck soup to big ten-tonners the likes of these two. The Alhambra is in position to port, and the Monterey Park is right where she's supposed to be to starboard."

Pitt nodded at a small red model. "I see our Russian friends are still with us."

"The Mikhail Kurkov?" Giordino said. He picked up a blue replica of a warship and placed it next to the red model. "Yeah, but she can't be enjoying the game. The Juneau, that Navy guided-missile cruiser, hangs on like glue."

"And the wreck buoy's signal unit?"

"Serenely beeping away eighty feet beneath the uproar," Giordino announced. "Only twelve hundred yards, give or take a hair, bearing zero-five-nine, southwest that is."

"Thank God we haven't been blown off the homestead," Pitt sighed.

"Relax." Giordino grinned reassuringly. "You act like a mother with a daughter out on a date after midnight every time there's a little breeze."

"The mother-hen complex becomes worse the closer we get," Pitt admitted. "Ten more days, Al. If we can get ten calm days, we can wrap it up."

"That's up to the weather oracle." Giordino turned to Farquar. "What about it, O Great Seer of Meteorological Wisdom?"

"Twelve hours' advance notice is all you'll get out of me," Farquar grunted, without looking up. "This is the North Atlantic. She's the most unpredictable of any ocean in the world. Hardly one day is ever the same. Now, if your precious Titanic had gone down in the Indian Ocean, I could give you your ten day prediction with an eighty percent chance of accuracy."

"Excuses, excuses," Giordino replied. "I bet when you make love to a woman, you tell her going in that there's a forty-per-cent chance she'll enjoy it."

"Forty per cent is better than nothing," Farquar said casually.

Pitt caught a gesture by the sonar operator and moved over to him. "What have you got?"

"A strange pinging noise over the amplifier," the sonar man replied. He was a pale-faced man, about the size and shape of a gorilla. "I've picked it up off and on during the last two months. Strange sort of sound, kind of like somebody was sending messages."

"Make anything of it?"

"No, Sir. I had Curly listen to it, but he said it was pure gibberish."

"Most likely a loose object on the wreck that's being rattled about by the current."

"Or maybe it's a ghost," the sonar man said.

"You don't believe in them, but you're afraid of them, is that it?"

"Fifteen hundred souls went down with the Titanic," the sonar man said. "It's not unlikely that at least one came back to haunt the ship."

"The only spirits I'm interested in," Giordino said from the chart table, "are the kind you drink . . . ."

"The interior cabin camera of Sappho II just blacked out." This from the sandy-haired man seated at the TV monitors.

Pitt was immediately behind him, staring at the blackened monitor. "Is the problem at this end?"

"No, Sir. All circuits here and on the buoy's relay panel are operable. The problem must be on the Sappho II. It just seemed like somebody hung a cloth over the camera lens."

Pitt swung to face the radio operator. "Curly, contact Sappho II and ask them to check their cabin TV camera."

Giordino picked up a clipboard and checked the crew schedule. "Omar Woodson is in command of the Sappho II this shift."

Curly pressed the transmit switch. "Sappho II, hello Sappho II, this is Capricorn. Please reply." Then he leaned forward, pressing his headset tighter to his ears. "The contact is weak, sir. Lots of interference. The words are very broken. I can't make them out."