Iceberg (Dirk Pitt 3)

"Run-of-the-mill?" Neth sounded almost surprised. "Garden variety? Thank you, Sloan, for your highly enlightening description. I can hardly wait to visit there someday." He turned to Rapp. "What's our altitude?"

Rapp kept his eyes glued straight ahead. "One thousand feet. The same altitude we've been at all day . . . and yesterday . . .

and the day before that-"

"Just checking, thank you," Neth interrupted pontifically. "You'll never know, Rapp, how increasingly secure my old age becomes with your able talents at the controls."

He fitted a battered pair of flying goggles to his eyes, braced himself for the blasting cold, and opened his side window for a closer look. "Here she is," motioning to Rapp. "Make a couple of passes, and we shall see what we shall see."

It took only a few seconds for Neth's face to feel like the embattled surface of a pin cushion; the icy air tore at his skin until it thankfully turned numb. He gritted his teeth and kept his eyes glued to the berg.

The huge ice mass looked like a ghostly clipper ship under full sail as it floated gracefully beneath the cockpit windows.

Rapp eased the throttles back and twisted the controls slightly, sending the patrol plane into a wide, sweeping bank to port. He ignored the bank and turn indicator and judged his angle by peering over Neth's shoulder at the gleaming mound of ice.

Three times he circled, waiting for a sign from Neth to level the plane out. Finally Neth pulled his head in and picked up the microphone.

"Hadley! That berg is as bare as a newborn baby's ass."

"There's something down there, Lieutenant," Hadley came back. "I've got a beautiful blip on my-"

"I think I've spotted a dark object, skipper," Sloan interrupted. "Down near the waterline on the west face."

Neth turned to Rapp. "Swing down to a hundred feet."

It took only minutes for Rapp to comply. More minutes passed and still he circled the berg, holding the aircraft's speed a bare twenty miles an hour above stalling.

"Closer," Neth murmured intently, "another hundred feet."

"Why don't we simply land on the damn thing," Rapp offered conversationally. If he was overly concerned, he didn't look it.

His face wore the expression of one who was about to fall asleep. Only the tiny beads of sweat on his brow betrayed the total concentration upon the risky flying job at hand. The blue swells seemed so near, he felt as if he could reach past Neth's shoulder and touch them. And to add fuel to his growing tenseness, the walls of the iceberg now towered above the plane, the

summit disappearing entirely above the frames of the cockpit windows. One twitch, he thought, one tricky air current, and the port wing tip could catch on a wave crest and instantly transform the giant aircraft into a self-destructing cartwheel.

Neth became aware of something now . . . something indistinct, something flying across the unseen threshold between imagination and reality. It slowly materialized into a tangible thing, a manmade form.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity to Rapp, Neth pulled his head back into the cabin, again closed the side window, and pressed the mike switch.

"Sloan? Did you see it?" The words sounded stiff and muffled, as if Neth were talking through a pillow.

At first, Rapp thought it was because Neth's jaw and lips were frozen with the cold, but then he sneaked a fast glance and was surprised to see Neth's face frozen, not with cold but with the blank look of genuine awe.

"I saw it." Sloan's voice came over the intercom like a mechanical echo. "But I didn't think it was possible."

"Neither did I," Neth said, "but it's down there-a ship, a goddamned ghost ship imbedded in the ice." He turned to Rapp, shaking his head as if he didn't believe is own words. "I couldn't make out any details. Just a blurred outline of the bow, or maybe the stern, it's impossible to tell for certain."

He slipped off the goggles and raised the thumb of his right hand in the air, motioning up. Gratefully Rapp sighed and leveled out the patrol plane, putting a comfortable margin of space between the aircraft's underbelly and the cold Atlantic.

"Excuse me, Lieutenant." Hadley came through over the headphones.

He was hunched over his radar set, painstakingly studying a little white blip almost in the exact center of the scope. "For what it's worth, the overall length of that thing in the berg is in the neighborhood of one hundred and twenty-five feet."

"A derelict fishing trawler, most likely." Neth vigorously massaged his cheeks, wincing at the pain as the circulation began to return.

"Shall I contact District Headquarters in New York and request a rescue party?" Rapp asked matterof-factly.

Neth shook his head. "No need to rush a rescue ship. It's obvious there are no survivors. We'll make a detailed report after we've landed in Newfoundland."