Raise the Titanic! (Dirk Pitt 4)

Sandecker rubbed his hand across his eyes, then shook his head slowly as if to clear it. Finally he said, "Okay. Dirk, it's your baby."

Pitt nodded and turned away.

There were just five hours and ten minutes to go.

Two and a half miles below, the three men in the Deep Fathom, cold and alone in a remote, uncharitable environment, watched the water creep up the cabin walls inch by inch until it flooded the main circuitry and shorted out the instruments, throwing the interior of the cabin into blackness. Then they began to feel the sting of the thirty-four-degree water in earnest as it swirled around their legs. Standing there shivering under the torment of certain death, they still nurtured the spark to survive.

"As soon as we get topside," Kiel murmured, "I'm going to take a day off, and I don't care who knows it."

"Come again?" Chavez said in the darkness.

"They can fire me if they want to, but I'm sleeping in tomorrow."

Chavez groped for and found Kiel's arm, gripping it roughly. "What are you babbling about?"

"Take it easy," Merker said. "With the life-support system gone, the carbon-dioxide buildup is getting to him. I'm beginning to feel a bit giddy myself."

"Foul air on top of everything else," Chavez grumbled. "If we don't drown, we get crushed when the hull bursts, and if we don't get mashed like eggshells, we suffocate on our own air. Our future looks none too bright."

"You left out exposure," Merker added sardonically. "If we don't climb above this freezing water, we won't get a chance at the other three."

Kiel said nothing but limply allowed Chavez to shove him into the uppermost sleeping bunk. Then Chavez followed and sat on the edge, his feet dangling over the side.

Merker struggled through the crotch-deep water to the forward viewport and looked out. He could see only the haloed outline of the Sappho II through the blinding glare of her lights. Even though the other craft hovered only ten feet away, there was nothing she could do for the stricken Deep Fathom while they were both surrounded by the relentless pressure of the hostile deep. As long as she is still there, Merker thought, they haven't written us off. He took no small consolation in the fact that they were not alone. It wasn't much to lean on, but it was all they had.

On board the supply ship Alhambra, camera crews from the three major networks, swept up in the swirling tide of expectation, feverishly struggled to get their equipment into action. Along every available foot of starboard-deck railing, wire-service reporters peered through binoculars in hypnotic concentration at the Capricorn floating two miles away, while photographers aimed their telephoto lenses on the surface of the water between the ships. Trapped in one corner of a makeshift pressroom, Dana Seagram pulled a foul-weather jacket tightly around her shoulders and gamely stood up to the dozen news people armed with tape recorders who were pushing microphones toward her face as though they were lollipops.

"Is it true, Ms. Seagram, that attempting to raise the Titanic three days ahead of schedule is in reality a last-ditch attempt to save the lives of the men trapped below?"

"It is only one of several solutions," Dana replied.

"Are we to understand that all other attempts have failed?"

"There have been complications," Dana admitted.

Inside one of the jacket's pockets, Dana nervously twisted a handkerchief until her fingers turned sore. The long months of give-and-take with the men and women of the press were beginning to tell.

"Since the loss of communications with the Deep Fathom, how can you know for certain whether the crew is still alive?"

"Computer data assure us that their situation will not turn critical for another four hours and forty minutes."

"How does NUMA intend to bring up the Titanic if the electrolyte chemical is not fully injected into the silt around the hull?"

"I can't answer that," Dana said. "Mr. Pitt's last message prom the Capricorn only stated that they were going to raise the wreck in the next few hours. He did not offer details regarding the method."

"What if it's too late? What if Kiel, Chavez, and Merker are already dead?"

Dana's expression went rigid. "They are not dead," she said with eyes blazing. "And, the first one of you who reports such a cruel and inhuman rumor before it's a proven fact will get their ass kicked off this ship, credentials and Nielsen ratings be damned. Do you understand?"

The reporters stood there a moment in mute surprise at Dana's sudden display of anger, and then slowly and silently they began to lower the microphones and melt toward the deck outside.

Rick Spencer unrolled a large piece of paper on the chart table and anchored it down with several half-empty coffee mugs. It was an overhead drawing that depicted the Titanic and her position in relation to the sea floor. He began pointing a pencil at various spots about the hulk that were marked with tiny crosses.

"Here's the way it shapes up," he explained. "According to the computer data, we set eighty charges, each containing thirty pounds of explosives, at these key points in the sediment along the Titanic's hull."

Sandecker leaned over the drawing, his eyes scanning the crosses. "I see that you've staggered them in three rows on each side."

"That's right, sir," Spencer said. "The outside rows are set sixty yards away; the middle, forty; and the inner rows are just twenty yards from the ship's plates. We'll detonate the starboard outer row first. Then eight seconds later we fire the port outer row. Another eight seconds and we repeat the procedure with the middle rows, and so on."