Night Probe! (Dirk Pitt 6)

"According to our laser probe," replied Chase, "bedrock lies at thirty-seven feet."

"You could blanket a train and still have twenty feet to spare," said Riley.

Giordino's eyes narrowed. "If geniuses were awarded roses and idiots skunks, I'd get about ten skunks."

"Well, maybe seven skunks," Chase needled him. "Why the self-flagellation?"

"I was too dumb to see the solution to the enigma. Why the proton magnetometer can't get a solid reading. Why the sub bottom profiler can't distinguish an entire train under the sediment."

"Care to share your revelation?" queried Riley.

"Everyone takes for granted that the weakened bridge collapsed under the weight of the train and they dropped together, the locomotive and coaches entangled with steel girders, into the water below,"

Giordino said briskly. "But what if the train fell through the center span first, and then the entire bridge dropped down on top and blanketed it?"

Riley stared at Chase. "I think he's got something. The weight of all that steel could well have pressed all trace of the train deep into the soft sand."

"His theory also explains why our detection gear has struck out," Chase agreed. "The broken mass of the bridge structure effectively distorts and shields our probe signals from any objects beneath."

Giordino faced Riley. "Any chance of tunneling under the wreckage?"

"No way," grunted Riley. "The bottom is like quicksand. Besides, the current is too strong for my divers to accomplish much."

"We'll need a barge with a crane and dredge to yank that bridge off the bottom if we expect to lay our hands on the train," said Giordino.

Riley rose wearily to his feet. "Okay, I'll get my boys to shoot some underwater survey photol so we'll know where to lay the jaws of the crane."

Giordino took off his cap and wiped a sleeve over his forehead. "Funny how things work out. Here I thought we'd have the easy time of it, while Pitt and his crew got the short end of the stick."

"God knows what they're up against in the St. Lawrence," said Chase. "I wouldn't trade places with them."

"Oh, I don't know," Giordino shrugged. "If Pitt is running true to form, he's probably sitting in a deck chair with a beautiful woman on one side and a mai tai on the other, lapping up the Canadian sun."

A strange mist, a swirling, reddish mist curtained off the light and swam thickly in front of Pitt's eyes.

Once, twice, several times he tried desperately to struggle through to the other side, reaching out in front of him like a blind man.

There had been no time to prepare for the shock, no time for his mind to comprehend, no time even to wonder. He wiped away the claret that trickled over his brows and probed a gash on his forehead four inches long and thankfully not skull-deep.

Pitt dragged himself to his feet, staring in disbelief at the litter of bodies around him.

Rudi Gunn's pale face looked up at Pitt, eyes lost and uncomprehending, and devoid of expression. He swayed on hands and knees, muttering softly. "Oh, God! Oh, God! What happened?"

"I don't know," Pitt answered in a strained voice, foreign even to himself. "I don't know."

On shore Shaw froze in hunched paralysis, lips compressed until his mouth no longer showed, face contorted in blind and bitter rage, a bitterness directed at his own sense of guilt.

Ignoring Villon's order to leave Canada, he had set up camp on the eastern tip of Father's Point, two-and-a-half miles from the salvage site. He had assembled a British army S-66 long range reconnaissance scope that could read a newspaper headline at five miles, and had begun the tedious routine of observing the small fleet of ships moored over the Empress of Ireland.

Launches were charging back and forth between the two naval vessels like ferries held to a schedule.

Shaw amused himself by imagining the heated negotiations going on between the American and Canadian officers.

The Ocean Venturer appeared still and dead. No one moved about its decks, but he could clearly see that the derrick was still in operation as its huge winch pulled up slime-covered scrap from the hulk below.

Shaw sat back to rest his eyes for a moment and munch a cou

ple of candy bars that passed for breakfast. He noticed a small outboard hydroplane coming down the river at great speed, somewhere between ninety and a hundred miles an hour as it blasted off the wave tops and trailed a ten-foot rooster tail in its wake.