Flood Tide (Dirk Pitt 14)

As soon as they cleared the harbor, Wilbanks pushed the throttle forward and the Divercity leaped ahead, bow clear of the water, until she was skimming the waves at nearly thirty miles an hour. While Julia and Giordino sat aft, enjoying the view and the beginning of a spectacular day under a sky decorated with clouds drifting overhead like a grazing herd of white buffalo, Pitt gave Wilbanks his chart with an X marked twenty-five miles just south of east from the Gallagher's house. He had enclosed the X within a five-mile-by-five-mile search grid. Wilbanks then programmed the coordinates into the computer and watched as the numbers came up on the monitor. Hall busied himself studying the photos and dimensions of the Princess Dou Wan.

It seemed hardly any time had passed before Wilbanks slowed the boat and announced, "Coming up on lane one in eight hundred meters." He used the metric system, since the equipment was set up for it.

Pitt helped Hall drop over the magnetometer sensor and the side-scan sonar towfish, trailing them behind the stern of the boat on tethered cables. After tying off the cables, they returned to the cabin.

Wilbanks steered the boat toward the end of a line displayed on the monitor that led to a search grid with parallel lanes. "Four hundred meters to go."

"I feel like I'm taking part in an adventure," said Julia.

"You're going to be sadly disappointed," Pitt laughed. "Running search lanes for a shipwreck is downright tedious. You might compare it to mowing grass on an endless lawn. You can go hours, weeks or even months without finding so much as an old tire."

Pitt took over the magnetometer duties as Hall set up the Klein & Associates Systems 2000 sonar. He sat on a stool in front of the high-resolution color video display unit that was mounted in the same console as a thermal printer that recorded the floor of the lake in 256 shades of gray.

"Three hundred meters," Wilbanks droned.

"What range are we set for?" Pitt asked Hall.

"Since we're hunting for a large target five hundred feet in length, we'll run thousand-meter lanes." He pointed to the lake-bed detail that was beginning to unreel from the printer. "The bottom looks flat and undisturbed, and since we're operating in fresh water, we should have no problem spotting an anomaly that fits the target's dimensions."

"Speed?"

"The water's pretty calm. I think we can run at ten miles an hour and still get a sharp recording."

"Can I watch?" asked Julia from the cabin doorway.

"Be my guest," said Hall, making room for her in the cramped quarters.

"The detail is amazing," she said, staring at the image from the printer. "You can clearly see ripples in the sand."

"The resolution is good," Hall lectured her, "but nowhere near the definition of a photograph. The sonar image translates similar to a photo that's been duplicated and then run through a copy machine three or four times."

Pitt and Hall exchanged grins. Observers always became addicted to watching the sonar data. Julia would be no different. They knew that she would gaze entranced for hours, enthusiastically waiting for the image of a ship to materialize.

"Starting lane one," Wilbanks proclaimed.

"What's our depth, Ralph?" Pitt asked.

Wilbanks glanced up at his depth sounder, which hung from the roof on one side of the helm. "About four hundred ten feet."

An old hand at search-and-survey, Giordino shouted from his comfortable position on the cushion where he lay with his cast propped up on a railing. "I'm going to take a siesta. Yell out if you spot anything."

The hours passed slowly as the Divercity plowed through the low waves at ten miles an hour mowing the lawn, the magnetometer ticking away, the recording line trailing down the center of the graph paper until swinging off to the sides when it detected the presence of iron. In unison, the side-scan sonar emitted a soft clack as the thermal plastic film unreeled from the printer. It revealed a lake bed cold and desolate and free of human debris.

"It's a desert down there," said Julia, rubbing tired eyes.

"No place to build your dream house," said Hall with a little grin.

"That finishes lane twenty-two," Wilbanks broadcast. "Coming around on lane twenty-three."

Julia look

ed at her watch. "Lunchtime," she announced, opening the picnic basket she had packed at the bed and breakfast. "Anybody besides me hungry?"

"I'm always hungry," Giordino called out from the back of the boat.

"Amazing." Pitt shook his head incredulously. "At twelve feet away, outside in a breeze with the roar of the outboard motor, he can still hear the mere mention of food."

"What delicacies have you prepared?" Giordino asked Julia, having dragged himself to the cabin doorway.