Treasure of Khan (Dirk Pitt 19)

"Whoever tried to sink your vessel may have had an interest in halting our research project," Pitt added. "If so, I'd like to find out why. Our dive gear is stowed in the forward hold, so we have access to all of our equipment."

"It may not be safe," Kharitonov cautioned.

"The only difficult part will be to convince Al to dive before breakfast," Pitt said, trying to lighten the morbid task at hand.

"I have it on good authority that the local IHOP is having an all-you-can-eat special on sturgeon pancakes," Giordino replied with a raised brow.

"We'll just have to hope they don't run out."

Gunn joined Pitt and Giordino as they motored up to the grounded ship in a borrowed Zodiac. Climbing the sloped deck to the forward hold, Gunn lent a hand as the two men pulled on black dry suits and weight belts, then hooked up the lightweight rebreather systems. Before they pulled on their faceplates, Gunn pointed a finger up toward the deckhead.

"I'm going to check the computers up in the bridge and get an update on regional seismic activity. Don't run off with any mermaids without me," he said.

"They'd be too blue to swim in this frigid water anyway," Giordino grunted.

Foregoing fins, the two men trudged down the deck in the rubber-soled feet of their dry suits and waded into the water. When the water level reached his shoulders, Pitt reached up and flicked on a small light strapped to his head, then ducked underwater. A starboard side stairwell was just a few feet ahead and Pitt walked toward it like Frankenstein's monster, plodding slowly against the water's resistance. A bouncing beam of light to his rear told him Giordino was following just a few feet behind.

Dropping down the stairs in a series of hops, Pitt passed the lower cabin level and continued down to the poop deck and engine room. Distancing himself from the surface daylight, a cloud of darkness quickly enshrouded him. The water itself was as clear as a swimming pool, though, and Pitt's small headlight cut a bright white path through the gloom. With negative buoyancy, it was easier to walk than swim and he moon-hopped his way to the starboard engine-room hatchway. As the chief engineer had reported, the heavy steel door was sealed closed. An old, rusty chain was wrapped around the latch and fastened to the bulkhead, locking the hatch shut. Pitt noted that a gold-colored padlock, which secured the chain, appeared to be new.

Pitt watched the glow from Giordino's light illuminate the hatch, then the snips from the bolt cutter slipped in front of him and grasped a link of chain near the padlock. Pitt turned and watched as Giordino cut the link as if cracking a walnut, the Italian's thick arms easily brandishing the cutter. As it sliced through the second half of the link, Pitt unwound the chain and pulled open the hatch, then stepped inside.

Though the Vereshchagin was more than thirty years old, the engine room was neat and spotless, the hallmark of a meticulous chief engineer. The ship's large diesel generator occupied most of the room, centered in the middle of the bay. Pitt slowly circled the bay, searching for obvious signs of damage to the deck and bulkheads, as well as the engine itself, but none was evident. Only a large steel-grated footplate was out of place, pulled up from the rear deck and left leaning against a tool bin. Peering inside, Pitt recognized it as an opening to the bilge. A four-foot drop led to a crawl space that ran under the enclosed deck. At its base was the curved steel plate of the ship's hull.

Lowering himself into the hole, Pitt dropped to the hull plate and knelt down, examining the compartment toward the stern. As far as his light would shine, the hull plates appeared smooth and intact. Spinning slowly around, he backed into a metal object as Giordino's light-dispensing head poked into the compartment. Under the beam of Giordino's spotlight, Pitt noticed a thick pipe running forward from the object at his back. Turning to examine the protrusion, he noted Giordino was nodding his head up and down in affirmation.

The object was a squat valve that rose a foot above the trailing pipe. Adjacent to it was a small red placard that proclaimed in bold white letters PREDOSTEREZHENIYE!, which Pitt could only assume meant "Caution!" Pitt placed his gloved hands on the valve and twisted it counterclockwise. The valve wouldn't budge. He then reversed pressure and tried turning it clockwise. The valve turned freely under a light touch until Pitt pushed it to its stops. He glanced at Giordino, who nodded back with a knowing look. It was as simple as that. The valve opened the ship's sea cock, which would flood the bilge—and, ultimately, the entire ship—when opened at sea. Somebody had entered the engine room, opened the sea cock, disabled the bilge pumps, and then sealed off access to the bay. A quick and easy way to sink a ship in the middle of the night.

Pitt swam out of the bilge compartment and crossed the engine room. On the opposite side, he found an identical grated floor plate, this one properly positioned in the deck. Yanking the grate off, he climbed down and inspected the portside sea cock, finding it too had been turned to the open position. Closing the valve, he reached for the open hand of Giordino, who helped yank him out of the compartment and onto the engine-room deck.

Half of their objective was complete. They had accessed the engine room and determined the cause of the flooding. But there was still the question of Sarghov, Anatoly, and the missing oil survey team. Glancing at his watch, Pitt noted that they had been submerged for nearly thirty minutes. Though they had plenty of air and bottom time left, the cold water was beginning to sap at his bones, despite the insulating dry suit. In his younger days, he would dive nearly oblivious to the cold, but Father Time was offering yet another reminder that he was no longer a kid.

Shaking off the thought, he led Giordino out of the room, then quickly checked the other flooded compartments around the engine bay. Finding nothing out of sorts, they ascended the stairwell a level to the lower cabin berths. The passageway led amidships then turned fore and aft, with cabins on either side of the hall that extended to the ship's beam.

With hand gestures, Pitt directed Giordino to check the portside cabins while he searched the starboard berths. Moving aft, he felt like a prowler as he entered the first cabin, which he knew to be Sarghov's. Despite being completely submerged, Pitt was surprised to find that the contents of the room had remained largely in place. Only a few sheaves of typewritten papers and sections of a local newspaper drifted lazily about the flooded cabin. Pitt saw a laptop computer sitting open on a desk, its screen long since shorted out from the immersion. A foul-weather jacket, which Sarghov had with him at dinner, was draped over the desk chair. Peeking into the small cabin closet, Pitt found an assortment of Sarghov's shirts and pants hanging neatly on a rack. It was not the reflection of a man who had planned to depart the ship, Pitt observed.

Exiting Sarghov's cabin, he quickly searched the next three cabins before reaching the final starboard berth. It was the one cabin Gunn had been unable to reach when he searched for the oil survey team. Across the passageway, Pitt saw the flickering light from Giordino, who had moved ahead of him and was searching the last port cabin.

Pitt turned the latch and leaned his body against the door to force it open against the invisible force of the water. Like the other cabins he searched, its interior appeared orderly, with no obvious disruptions from the flooding. Only, from the doorway, Pitt could see that there was something different about this cabin. It still contained its occupant.

In the restrictive light, it might have been a duffel bag or a couple of pillows lying on the bunk, but Pitt had a feeling otherwise. Taking a step closer, he could see it was a man lying on the bunk, a pale and very dead man at that.

Pitt slowly approached the prone figure and cautiously leaned over the body, illuminating the corpse with the beam from his spotlight. The open eyes of the surly fishing boat captain stared up at him without blinking, a confused look permanently etched upon the dead man's face. The old fisherman was clad in a T-shirt, and his legs were tucked snugly under the covers. The tight blanket had kept him from floating off the bunk until the air in his lungs had slowly purged.

Shining his light closely at the fisherman's head, Pitt rubbed a finger across the man's hairline. Two inches above his ear, a slight indentation creased the side of his head. Though the skin had not broken, it was obvious that a heavy blow had cracked the man's skull. Pitt morbidly wondered whether the old fisherman had been done in by the blow itself or had drowned while unconscious when the cabin flooded.

As Giordino's light suddenly appeared in the doorway, Pitt took a careful look around the floor of the bunk. The carpeted deck was bare. He saw no porcelain pitchers, lead paperweights, or bottles of vodka that could have fallen off a shelf and struck the man by accident. The entire room was bare, a spare cabin given to the fisherman who brought no belongings of his own.

Pitt took another look at the old man and knew his initial instincts were right. From the first the minute he saw him, Pitt knew the old fisherman had not died by accident. He had been murdered.

-7-

"IT'S GONE," GUNN SPAT, his face flushed with anger. "Someone systematically yanked out our database hardware and disappeared with it. All of our data collection points, everything we've gathered in the last two weeks, it's all gone." Gunn continued to fume as he helped Pitt and Giordino out of their dry suits beneath the bridge.

"What about backups, Rudi?" Pitt asked.

"That's right. As a good computer geek, I know you save everything on backup disks, probably in triplicate," Giordino admonished as he hung up his dry suit on a hook.

"Our rack of backup DVDs is missing, too," Gunn cried. "Somebody had an idea of what to take."