Iceberg (Dirk Pitt 3)

Girls are my department." He stopped abruptly and said sharply: "Your hands look like you held them against a grindstone."

Hunnewell lifted his hands and stared indifferently at the bleeding fingers. "Not really as bad as they look.

A bit of antiseptic and a manicure and they'll be as good as new."

"Come on," Pitt said. "There's a first-aid kit in the copter. I'll fix them up for you."

A few minutes later, as Pitt tied the last small bandage, Hunnewell asked, "Did you find any sign of a tunnel before I took my spill?"

"It's a slick piece of work," Pitt replied. "The entire circumference of the entrance cover is beveled, a perfect match with the surrounding ice. If someone hadn't got careless and cut a small handgrip, I'd have walked right over it."

Hunnewell's face suddenly grew dark. "This accursed iceberg," he said grimly. "I swear that it bears a personal enmity against us."

16

He flexed his fingers and solemnly studied the eight little bandages masking the tips. His eyes seemed strained and his face looked weary.

Pitt walked over and raised a round slab of ice three feet in diameter by three inches thick, revealing a circular hole barely large enough for one man to crawl through.

He turned his head away. The stench of burnt paint, fabric and fuel, mixed with torched metal, rose from the opening.

"That should prove I can detect smells through an ice cube," Pitt said.

"Yes, you've passed the nose test," Hunnewell said smilingly. "But you've failed miserably on your thermite cha

rge theory.

"That's nothin' but a burned-out hulk down there." he paused to give Pitt a scholarly gaze over the tops of his spectacles. "We could have blasted until next summer without doing any damage to the derelict."

Pitt shrugged. "Win a few, lose a few." He passed a spare flashlight to Hunnewell. "I'll go first. Give me five minutes before you follow."

Hunnewell crouched at the edge of the ice tunnel as Pitt knelt to enter.

"Two. I'll give you two minutes, no more. Then I'll be right behind you."

The tunnel, illuminated by the shattered rays of the sun through the ice crystals above, ran downward at a thirty-degree angle for twenty feet, stopping at the blackened steel plates, charred and bent, of the hull.

The smell by this time was so strong that Pitt found it an effort just to breathe. He shook off the irritating odor and dragged himself to within a foot of the fire-scarred metal, discovering that the tunnel curved and parallelled the hull for another ten feet, ending finally at an open hatch. savagely twisted and distorted. He could only wonder at the wite-hot temperatures responsible.

Crawling over the jagged edge of the hatchway, he stood up and swung the beam of his flashlight, surveying the heat-defaced walls. It was impossible to tell what purpose the compartment served. Every square inch was' gutted by the terrible intensity of the fire. Pitt suddenly felt a dread of the unknown. He stood dead-still for several minutes, forcing his mind to regain control of his emotions before he stepped across the debris toward the door leading to the alleyway and shone the light into the darkness beyond.

The beam torched the whole black length as far as the stairway to a lower deck. 'The corridor was barren except for the charred ashes of a carpet. It was the silence that was eerie. No creaking of the plates, no throb of the engines, no lapping of water against a weedencrusted hull, nothing, only the complete soundlessness of a void.

He hesitated in the doorway for a long minute, his first thought, conviction rather, was that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong with Admiral Sandecker's plans. This wasn't what they had been led to expect at all.

Hunnewell came through the hatchway and joined him. He stood next to Pitt, staring at the blackened walls, the distorted and crystallized metal, and the melted hinges that once held a wooden door. Wearily he leaned the doorway, his eyes half closed, shaking his head as it coming out of a trance.

"We'll find precious little that's of any use to us."

"We'll find nothing," Pitt said firmly. "What the fire left, our unknown friends have undoubtedly picked clean." As if to emphasize his words, he played the beam on the deck, revealing several overlapping footprints in the soot traveling to and from the open hatchway. "Let's see what they've been up to."

They went out into the alleyway, stepping through the ashes and debris on the deck, moved to the next compartment, and entered. It had been the radio room.

Most of the ruins were scarcely recognizable. The bunk and furniture were skeletons of charred wood, the remains of the radio equipment one congealed mess of melted metal and hardened drippings of stained solder.

Their senses by now had become accustomed to the overpowering stench and the grotesque carbonized surroundings, but they weren't the least bit prepared for the hideously misshapen form on the deck.

"Oh, good God!" Hunnewell gasped. He dropped his flashlight and it rolled across the deck and came to rest against the shockingly disfigured remains of a head, illuminating the skull and teeth where they burst from the incinerated flesh.