"Target coming up," Pitt reported. "Mark it number ninety-four."
Al Giordino punched in a code on his console. Instantly, the configuration of the river along with man-made landmarks and natural features behind the shoreline flashed into view on an on-line graphics display. Another code and the satellite laser-positioning system pinpointed with precise accuracy the image's exact position as it related to the surrounding landscape.
"Number ninety-four plotted and recorded," Giordino acknowledged.
Short, dark, and as compact as a barrel of concrete, Albert Giordino gazed through twinkling walnut eyes that sat under a wild mane of curly black hair. Give him a flowing beard and a sack of toys, Pitt often thought, and Giordino could have played a young version of an Etruscan Santa Claus.
Tremendously fast for a muscular man, he could fight like a tiger, and yet suffer the agonies of the damned if he was forced into conversing with women. Giordino and Pitt went back to high school together, played football at the Air Force Academy, and served in the final days of Vietnam. At one point in their service careers, at the request of Admiral James Sandecker, Chief Director of the National Underwater and Marine Agency, they were loaned out to NUMA on temporary status, a condition that had now stretched into nine years.
Neither man could remember how many times one had saved the life of the other, or at least prevented a very embarrassing situation that usually resulted out of some sort of devious mischief. Yet their escapades above and below the sea had become legendary, resulting in a certain amount of fame neither relished.
Pitt bent forward and focused on a digital isometric screen. The computer rotated the three-dimensional image, displaying the buried ship in amazing detail. The image and dimensions were recorded and communicated to a data processor where they were compared with known data of ancient Egyptian Nile boats. In a few seconds the computer analyzed a profile and made its call. Data on the vessel's construction blinked across the bottom of the screen.
"What we've got here seems to be a cargo vessel from the Sixth Dynasty," Pitt read out. "Built somewhere between 2000 and 2200 B.C."
"Her condition?" asked Giordino.
"Quite good," replied Pitt. "Like the others we found, she is well preserved by the silt. Her hull and rudder are still intact, and I can make out the mast lying across her deck. What's her depth?"
Giordino studied his data-positioning screen. "She's under 2 meters of water and 8 meters of silt."
"Any metal?"
"Nothing the proton mag could detect."
"Not surprising since iron wasn't known in Egypt until the twelfth century B.C. What do you read on the nonferrous scan?"
&n
bsp; Giordino twisted a dial on his console. "Not much. A few bronze fittings. Probably an abandoned derelict."
Pitt studied the imagery of the ship that had sunk in the river forty centuries ago. "Fascinating, how the design of the vessels remained virtually unchanged for three thousand years."
"Goes with their art," said Giordino.
Pitt looked at him. "Art?"
"Did you ever notice that their art style stayed exactly the same from the First Dynasty to the thirtieth," Giordino pontificated. "Even bodily positions remained static. Why hell, in all that time they never figured out how to show the human eye from a side view by simply drawing it in half. Talk about tradition. The Egyptians were masters at it."
"When did you become an expert on Egyptology?"
True to type, Giordino gave a worldly-wise shrug. "Oh I've picked it up here and there."
Pitt was not fooled. Giordino had a sharp eye for detail. He seldom missed much, as proven by his observation of Egyptian art that went unnoticed by over 99 percent of the tourists and was never mentioned by the guides.
Giordino finished a beer and rolled the cold bottle over his forehead. He pointed a finger at the shipwreck as the research boat passed over and the image began to slip off the screen. "Hard to believe we've found ninety-four wrecks after surveying only 2 miles of river. Some stacked three deep."
"Not so incredible when you consider how many thousands of years boats have been sailing the Nile," Pitt lectured. "Vessels of all civilizations were lucky to last twenty years before being lost by storm, fire, and collision. And those that survived usually rotted away from neglect. The Nile between the Delta and Khartoum has more sunken vessels per square kilometer than any other place on earth. Fortunately for archaeologists, the wrecks were covered over with silt and preserved. They could well last another four thousand years before they're excavated."
"No sign of cargo," said Giordino, peering over Pitt's shoulder at the vanishing ship. "As you suggested, she probably outlived her usefulness and her owners let her deteriorate until she sank as a derelict."
The pilot of the research boat, Gary Marx, kept one eye trained on the echo sounder while scanning the river ahead with the other. A tall blond with limpid blue eyes, he wore only shorts, sandals, and a rancher's straw hat. He quarter turned his head and spoke out of the side of his mouth "That finishes the downstream run, Dirk."
"Okay," Pitt replied. "Swing around and make another run as close as you can to the shoreline."
"We're practically scraping bottom now," Marx said flatly, without due concern. "If we come any closer we'll have to tow the boat with a tractor."
"No reed for hysterics," Pitt said dryly. "Just bring us around, hug the riverbank, and mind we don't snag the sensor."