Raise the Titanic! (Dirk Pitt 4)

Their attention quickly turned to the sonar scope, but few of them could see it; the operator had drawn himself up so close to the glass that his head obscured it. Finally, Spencer straightened up. He sighed deeply to himself, pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket and rubbed his face and neck. "That's all she wrote," he said hoarsely. "There isn't any more."

"Still stationary," said the sonar operator. "The Big T is still stationary."

"Go baby!" Giordino pleaded. "Get your big ass up!"

"Oh God, dear God," Drummer mumbled. "The suction is still holding her to the bottom."

"Come on, damn you," Sandecker joined in. "Lift . . . lift."

If it was humanly possible for the mind to will 46,328 tons of steel to release its hold on the grave it had occupied for seventy-six long years and return to the sunlight, the men crowded around the sonarscope would have surely made it so. B

ut there was to be no psychokinetic phenomenon this day. The Titanic stayed stubbornly clutched to the sea floor.

"A dirty, rotten break," Farquar said.

Drummer held his hands over his face, turned away, and stumbled from the room.

"Woodson on the Sappho II requests permission to descend for a look-see," said Curly.

Pitt shrugged. "Permission granted."

Slowly, wearily, Admiral Sandecker sank into a chair. "What price failure?" he said.

The bitter taste of hopelessness flooded the room, swept by the grim tide of total defeat.

"What now?" Giordino asked, staring vacantly at the deck.

"What we came here to do," answered Pitt tiredly. "We go on with the salvage operation. Tomorrow we'll begin again to..."

"She's moved!"

No one reacted immediately.

"She moved," the sonar operator repeated. His voice had a quiver to it.

"Are you sure?" Sandecker whispered.

"Stake my life on it."

Spencer was too stunned to speak. He could only stare at the sonarscope with an expression of abject incredulity. Then his lips began working. "The aftershocks!" he said. "The aftershocks caused a delayed reaction."

"Rising," the sonar operator shouted, banging his fist on the arm of his chair. "That gorgeous old bucket of bolts has broken free. She's coming up."

48

At first everybody was too dumbstruck to move. The moment they had prayed for, had spent eight tortuous months struggling for, had sneaked up behind them and somehow they couldn't accept it as actually happening. Then the electrifying news began to sink in and they all began shouting at the same time, like a crowd of mission control space engineers during a rocket liftoff.

"Go baby, go!" Sandecker shouted as joyfully as a schoolboy.

"Move, you mother!" Giordino yelled. "Move, move!"

"Keep coming, you big beautiful rusty old floating palace, you," Spencer murmured.

Suddenly, Pitt rushed across to the radio and clutched Curly's shoulder in a viselike grip.

"Quick, contact Woodson on the Sappho II. Tell him the Titanic is on her way up and to get the hell out of the way before he's run over."

"Still on a surface course," the sonar operator said. "Speed of ascent accelerating."