Valhalla Rising (Dirk Pitt 16)

Giordino passed his empty cup to Pitt. "I think you'd better pour me another drink. On second thought, I'd better have ten or twelve, or I won't sleep between here and the Tonga Trench while having nightmares about imploding submersibles."

They sat there in Pitt's cabin until midnight, sipping the reserve tequila, telling old war stories and reliving their adventures together throughout the years. Pitt told of finding the Emerald Dolphin on fire and the rescue, the timely arrival of the Earl of Wattlesfield, the report of the sinking by the captain of the Audacious, his rescue of Kelly and the killing of the assassin.

When he finished, Giordino rose to return to his cabin. "You've been a busy boy."

"I wouldn't want to go through it again."

"When does the shipyard expect to have the hull repaired?" he asked.

"Captain Burch and I hope to get under way the day after tomorrow and be on site four days later."

"Time enough for me to regain the tan I lost in the Antarctic." He noticed the leather bag sitting in

the corner of the cabin. "Is that the case you mentioned that belonged to Dr. Egan?"

"The same."

"You say that after all that, it was empty?"

"As a bank vault after Butch Cassidy rode out of town."

Giordino picked it up and ran his fingers over the leather. "Fine grain. Quite old. German made. Egan had good taste."

"You want it? You can have it."

Giordino sat back down again and set the leather case on his lap. "I have a thing about old luggage."

"So I've noticed."

Giordino unlatched the catches and lifted open the lid-and nearly two quarts of oil flowed out into his lap and onto the carpet covering the deck. He sat there in mute surprise as it soaked his pants legs and pooled on the carpet. After the shock faded, he gave Pitt a very acidic look indeed.

"I never knew you had a thing for practical jokes."

Pitt's face reflected pure astonishment. "I don't." He jumped to his feet, rushed across the cabin and peered into the case. "Trust me. I had nothing to do with this. This case was empty when I checked it yesterday. No one but Chief Engineer House and I have been on board for the past twenty-four hours. I don't understand why somebody would bother to sneak in here and fill it with oil. What's the point?"

"Then where did it come from? It obviously didn't just materialize."

"I haven't the foggiest idea," said Pitt. There was a strange look in his eyes that hadn't been there before. "But I'm betting we'll find out before the voyage is over."

12

The mystery of who put the oil in Egan's leather case was set aside as Pitt and Giordino began checking and testing the I equipment and electronic systems of the Sea Sleuth, the survey vessel's autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). During the voyage to the grave of the Emerald Dolphin, they discussed the wreck probe procedure with Captain Burch and the ocean engineers on board. All agreed that for reasons of safety the autonomous vehicle should be sent down first rather than the manned submersible, Abyss Navigator. There was nothing sleek or streamlined about the design of the Sea Sleuth. She was the extreme of functional design. Utilitarian and expedient, she made a Mars lander look artistic. Seven feet high by six feet wide by seven feet in length, she weighed in at slightly less than seven thousand pounds. Her skin was a thick layer of titanium, and from a distance she looked like a huge elongated egg open on the sides, standing on sled runners. A circular protrusion on top housed her two variable-buoyancy tanks. Support tubes laced her inner construction beneath the variable-buoyancy tanks.

Mounted inside, almost as if they had been placed there by a child with his Lego set, were high-resolution video and still cameras, a computer housing and sensors that recorded salinity, water temperature and oxygen content. A pressure-balanced, direct-drive DC motor provided her propulsion and was energized by a powerful manganese-alkaline battery system. Highly sophisticated transducers transported signals and imagery through the watery depths to the mother ship far above on the surface, and it sent control signals in return. Her path was illuminated by an array of ten external lights.

Like some mechanical monster out of a science-fiction movie, a complicated robotic arm, or manipulator, as it was called, extended from one side of the vehicle. It had the muscle to lift a four-hundred-pound anchor and the sensitivity to pick up a teacup.

Unlike earlier robotic vehicles, Sea Sleuth was untethered and had no umbilical cord connected to controls in the pilothouse. She was completely autonomous; her propulsion and video cameras were operated from the command room of the Deep Encounter thousands of feet above.

A crewman came up to Pitt as he was helping Giordino adjust the robotic arm. "Captain Burch said to let you know that we're three miles from the target."

"Thank you," said Pitt. "Please tell the skipper that Al and I will join him shortly."

Giordino threw a pair of screwdrivers into a toolbox, stood up and stretched his back. "She's ready as she'll ever be."

"Let's head up to the bridge and see how the Dolphin looks on the side scan sonar."

Burch and several other NUMA engineers and scientists were in the command center compartment just aft of the pilothouse. Everyone's faces and hands were reflected in a weird purplish cast from the overhead lighting. Recent experiments had determined that instrumentation was easier to read for long elements of time under a red-blue wave band of light.