Celtic Empire (Dirk Pitt 25)

“Nope,” he said, with a shake of the head. “Al and I will be spending our time in the river, cutting that big, ugly beast in half.”

12

The underwater cutting torch burned with the brightness of the midday sun. Steadying himself against the hull with a large suction device, Pitt guided the torch across the Mayweather’s half-inch-thick outer steel hull. Thirty feet away, but on the ship’s interior side, Giordino was duplicating the cut, slicing through a slimmer inner hull. Working off a surface-supplied air source, the men had worked nearly two days straight to dissect the sunken tanker.

With his knees resting on the river bottom, Pitt sliced down to the sediment, reaching the horizontal cut from the other side. Through his faceplate, he called to a control team member on the barge to cut the torch’s oxygen supply and electric power. The fire at the tip was extinguished, and Pitt raised the eye shield from his faceplate.

Satisfied with his work, he coiled the exothermic torch, swam up the outer hull, and set the device on the deck. Then he dove down the opposite side, dropping into the open interior. As he approached Giordino from the side, his partner cut a final opening through the inner hull.

As his torch was shut off, he looked at Pitt and nodded. “I do believe that makes two pieces,” he warbled through their underwater communications system. “If you want three, I’ll need a new set of arms.”

“I’m not sure there’s enough cutting rods left in Michigan to burn any more,” Pitt said. “Let’s go have a beer.”

They ascended to the surface, where their support crew pulled them by the powered cables back up to the barge.

Cruz greeted them as they climbed onto the deck and removed their dive helmets. “Well, it’s the mad butchers. How goes the cutting?”

“Like a sliced loaf of sourdough,” Giordino said.

“You’re through?”

Pitt nodded. “We’ve got clean cuts through both the inner and outer hulls.”

Cruz shook his head. “That was quick work. I figured it would take you another day.”

Pitt unzipped his dry suit and stepped to the rail. The scene around the sunken ship was one of mass congestion, accompanied by the din of multiple generators. The Mayweather was surrounded by work vessels, the barge and evacuation tanker positioned on either side, while the BioRem freighter was moored to the south. Hoses dipped over the sides from the latter two vessels, converging on the wreck.

Pitt looked upriver at a new visitor to the site. A massive lift barge was standing by, ready to hoist the bisected ship.

“What’s the status of the oil evacuation?” Pitt asked.

“The stern section is nearly dry,” Cruz said. “We can start on the forward section once the stern is lifted.”

“As soon as you’re ready, have the lift barge come alongside,” Pitt said.

“Will do. I’ll have my team set the lift cables in the meantime. We should be set to pull it up by morning.”

“Better advise the BioRem vessel of our lift plans. They’ll want to pull their hoses until the stern section is clear.”

“I’ll let Audrey know. Reports from a monitoring station downriver suggest a decrease in detected river oil. Their little bugs must be working.?

?

“Glad to hear.” Pitt surveyed the wreck. “With a little luck, we might have both sections off the bottom by tomorrow night.”

Cruz agreed with a nod. “We might just be saying aloha to Maui sooner than I thought.”

* * *

• • •

BY THREE IN THE MORNING, the lift barge had been positioned off the Mayweather’s flank and lift cables secured. At dawn, Pitt gave the go-ahead to proceed with the lift. The cables were pulled taut, and the Mayweather’s stern was hoisted high enough for an Army Corps of Engineers flatbed barge to be slipped beneath it. A pair of tugs then pulled the barge, with its massive cargo, down the Detroit River toward Cleveland and a waiting marine salvage yard.

“We’re halfway home,” Pitt said with satisfaction.

“The bow section should go quicker, as it has fewer oil compartments to evacuate,” Cruz noted.

The tired crew shifted their focus to the forward half of the wreckage, working without letup. The evacuation tanker was repositioned alongside the Mayweather’s bow, with Cruz overseeing pipeline access. Meanwhile, Pitt and Giordino set about rigging the lift cables to enable the raising of the section. Downriver, the hum of generators on the BioRem freighter indicated Audrey had deployed new feeder lines for deploying the bacterial agent.