Skeleton Coast (Oregon Files 4)

It was just as well. It was early in the season to have this many storms and a weary public wasn’t really concerned with a hurricane that never was. In keeping with tradition, each storm was named after the corresponding letter in the alphabet so that the first storm always has a name starting with the letter A, the second with the letter B, and so on. So when it came to the tenth storm, a storm that never made landfall, few would recall that it had been given the moniker of Tropical Storm Juan.

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THE dune buggy carrying Cabrillo, Max, Sloane, and Mafana flew across the desert on its fat tires, the souped-up engine roaring as Juan drove it at breakneck speed. Moses Ndebele had wanted to make the trip, but his doctors at a private South African hospit

al refused to let him leave so soon after the surgery to repair his shattered foot. He’d sent his old sergeant in his place, although he trusted Cabrillo implicitly.

They were running late for their appointment. The man at the company who rented them the vehicle was also a volunteer with the Swakopmund police. He had been delayed because he’d been out arresting a group of Europeans stranded in the desert who were responsible for a kidnapping that took place in Switzerland.

The open-topped buggy crested a hill and Juan whipped them into a slide that dug furrows into the ground. The vehicle rocked on its suspension as the four passengers gaped at the valley below.

The Rove looked as though she was under way on an ocean of sand. Small dunes lapped at her hull like gently rolling swells. If not for her missing funnel and her broken cargo derricks and the fact that every fleck of paint had been scoured from her, she would have looked like she had before being buried for a hundred years by the worst sandstorm in a century.

A short distance from her was a huge cargo chopper painted a bright turquoise with the name NUMA emblazoned on its rotor boom. Near it were two small excavators that had been used to remove the thirty feet of sand that had entombed the ship and a cluster of workers lounging in the shade under a white tent canopy.

Juan leaned over to kiss Sloane’s cheek. “You were right. Congratulations.”

She beamed at the compliment. “Was there ever any doubt?”

“Tons of it,” Max said from the backseat. Sloane reached back and slapped his leg playfully.

Juan put the buggy in gear and raced down the side of the dune. Their appearance made the workers get to their feet. Two of them detached themselves from the others and started across the desert floor to where a ramp had been rigged to give access to the Rove’s main deck. One carried a box under his arm.

Cabrillo braked just shy of the ramp and killed the engine. The only sound was a gentle breeze that stirred the air. He unstrapped his belts and climbed from the bucket seat as the two men approached. Both were solidly built and were maybe a year or two younger than him, though one had pure white hair and eyes that were as blue as his own. The other was darker, a Latino with a perpetually amused look on his face.

“I don’t know a whole lot of people in the world who truly impress Dirk Pitt,” the white-haired man from NUMA said. “So when I had the chance to meet one of them I took it. Chairman Cabrillo, I presume?”

“Juan Cabrillo.” They shook hands.

“I’m Kurt Austin and this rogue here is Joe Zavala. By the way, thanks for getting us away from cleanup duty in Angola where NUMA’s leading a hand.”

“Pleasure to meet you. How’s it coming?”

“Better than expected. Our ship happened to be nearby on a survey mission. Joe was able to modify a suction dredge used to take samples into an effective oil vacuum. We can pump the crude directly to storage tanks onshore. With Petromax deploying everything they have from other facilities in Nigeria, the spill should be totally cleared up in less than two weeks.”

“That’s great to hear,” Juan said, then added with a touch of self-recrimination. “Had we been a couple hours earlier there wouldn’t have been a need for such a cleanup effort.”

“And a couple hours later would have doubled it.”

“True.” Cabrillo turned to his companions. “This is the president of the Corporation, Max Hanley. Mafana here represents Moses Ndebele, and this is Sloane Macintyre, the reason we’re all standing eight miles from the ocean but looking at a steamship.”

“Quite a sight, huh?”

“Not that I’m complaining, but how did you find it so fast?”

Before answering, Joe Zavala produced bottles of Tusker lager from the box. The glass was icy cold and blistered with condensation. He popped the tops and handed them around. “It’s about the best way I’ve discovered to beat back the dust.”

They saluted each other and took long gulps.

“Ah!” Zavala breathed. “That’s the stuff.”

“To answer your question,” Austin said, wiping his mouth, “we turned the problem over to our resident computer genius, Hiram Yeager. He pulled together every scrap of information about the storm that hit the night the Rove disappeared, gleaning it from old ships’ logs, memoirs of people living in Swakopmund, missionaries’ journals, and a report filed with the British Admiralty concerning navigational changes to the coast of South West Africa after it was over.

“He fed everything he could into his computer and then added meteorological data about this area for the century since the storm. About a day later Max spit out the answer.”

“Max?” Hanley asked.

“It’s what he calls his computer. It created a map of the coastline as it is today with a line running parallel to it, ranging from a mile to more than ten miles inland. Had the Rove been close to shore, like to pick up passengers who’d made off with a fortune in diamonds, she would be buried somewhere along that line.”