Valhalla Rising (Dirk Pitt 16)

Giordino engaged the thruster motors and steered the Navigator with his control column along the compass direction given by Burch. Fourteen minutes later, the mangled wreckage where the ship had ripped apart came into view. Seeing the devastating effects of the holocaust fire firsthand rather than through an image on a video monitor was a shock. Nothing was recognizable. They felt as if they were gazing into a monstrous cavern piled with burned-out scrap. The only resemblance to what had once been a ship was the outline of her hull.

"Where to?" Giordino inquired.

Misty took several moments to study the interior deck plans of the Emerald Dolphin and get her bearings. Finally, she circled an area and passed it to Giordino.

"You want to go inside?" he asked Pitt, knowing he'd be less than pleased with the answer.

"As far as we can go," Pitt replied. "If at all possible, I'd like to penetrate into the chapel where the crew reported the fire started."

Giordino gave a doubtful stare inside the blackened and ominous-looking wreckage. "We could easily get trapped in there."

Pitt grinned. "Then I'll have time to finish my crossword puzzle."

"Yeah," Giordino grunted. "For all eternity." His sarcastic attitude was strictly for show. He would have leaped with Pitt off the Golden Gate Bridge if his friend had stood on the railing. He gripped the control column and gently placed his hand on the throttle. "Tell me where and say when."

Misty tried to ignore their sardonic humor, but the thought of dying alone, never to be found in the deepest reaches of the sea, was not a pretty one.

Before Pitt gave the word, he called up the Deep Encounter to report their situation. But there was no response. No voice replied over the speakerphone.

"Odd," he said, perplexed. "They're not answering."

"The communications equipment probably malfunctioned," Giordino said calmly.

Pitt wasted no more time in trying to raise the control center. He checked the oxygen gauges on the life-support system. They had an hour of bottom time left. "Go on in," he ordered. Giordino gave a faint nod and orchestrated the submersible's controls, very slowly steering her into the opening.

Already, sea life was probing the wreckage and setting up housekeeping. They spotted several rat-tailed fish, a species of shrimp and what could only be described as a sea slug that had somehow wiggled its way into the jagged ruins.

The burned-out interior of the shipwreck looked menacing. There was a mild current but not enough to cause Giordino a problem in keeping the Navigator steady. The dim outline of what was left of the decks and bulkheads came out of the gloom. Looking back and forth from the plans of the ship and the viewport, Pitt estimated which deck to enter to get to the chapel.

"Rise to the fourth deck," directed Misty. "It leads through a shopping mall to the chapel."

"We'll try to gain entry there," said Pitt.

Slowly, Giordino maneuvered the sub upward without dropping any more weights, using only the thrusters. As soon as they reached the deck Misty had indicated, he hovered the Navigator for a minute while both men stared inside the wreckage, now illuminated by the four forward lights. Melted pipes and electrical wiring hung down like distorted tentacles. Pitt turned on the camera systems and began recording the mess.

"We'll never get around that," said Giordino.

"Not around," Pitt contradicted, "but through. Run our bow against those pipes dead ahead."

Without argument, Giordino eased the submersible into a maze of melted pipe that hung down from the ceiling of the deck above. The pipes parted and crumbled as if they were made out of poor-quality plaster of Paris, sending out a cloud of ashes that the sub easily slipped through.

"You called that right," muttered Giordino.

"I figured they'd be brittle after being subjected to the intense heat."

They soared though the charred wreckage of the shopping avenue. Nothing was left of the open three-deck avenue of stylish boutique shops. They had all burned to nothingness. Blackened and warped bulkheads were all that remained to indicate where they once stood. Giordino cautiously navigated around and over the piles of debris that rose like a range of hills covered with jagged black lava rock.

Misty felt an eerie feeling, more so than the men, knowing they were moving through space where men had strolled and relaxed while women shopped; where children had laughed and run ahead of their parents. She could almost imagine seeing the ghosts stalking the avenue. Most of the passengers had cheated death and were now on their way home, taking memories that would haunt them the rest of their lives.

"Not much to look at," said Giordino.

Pitt gazed at the desolation. "No shipwreck treasure hunter will ever waste his time and money on this ruin."

"I wouldn't bet on it. You know how it goes. Twenty years from now, someone will claim the ship went down with a million dollars in cash in the purser's safe. Fifty years later, it will be rumored as fifty million dollars in silver. Then in two hundred years, they'll say she went down with a billion in gold."

"Intriguing, when you consider more has been spent searching for gold under the seas during the last century than has ever been found."

"Only the Edinburgh, Atocha and Central America truly paid off."