“With a transponder in the water, we can operate it in real time from the ship. It would be a good test of its abilities.” Giordino sat upright, setting aside his cigar. “I might even be able to rig a deployment device so the AUV could drop it over the site and save time.”
Pitt knew an American-flagged ship lingering near Cuban waters, especially near Havana, was liable to attract unwanted attention. As soon as Giordino had his AUV launched an hour later, he repositioned the Sargasso Sea several miles outside Cuba’s territorial limit.
Under Giordino’s programming, the yellow AUV sped to the Maine’s last-known coordinates and dove to the bottom, initiating a survey grid with its sensors on alert for a large magnetic object.
After six hours, the AUV completed its survey and made a beeline for the NUMA research ship. The vehicle was hoisted aboard and its data pack removed. With the Pitt family crowded around him, Giordino reviewed the results. A square diagram filled with vertical lines appeared on the monitor, sprinkled with amoeba-shaped bubbles.
“We’ve got a handful of small magnetic anomalies. And a large one in lane 14.” Giordino pointed to a large red splotch.
“Let’s take a look at the sonar images,” Pitt said.
Giordino brought up the sonar record and scrolled rapidly until a data table in the corner indicated lane 14. “The magnetic target was near the top of the lane,” he said, slowing the video to its recorded speed.
A gold-tinted rendition of the seafloor appeared. The sonar system created shadowy images of rocks, mounds, and other features that rose from the seabed. The record scrolled a short distance when a dark trapezoidal shape appeared on one side of the screen. Giordino froze the image. “There she is.”
Summer and Dirk leaned in for a closer look. There was no mistaking the elegant tapered stern of the ancient warship. The opposite end was oddly blunt where the Army Corps had cut and inserted a flat bulkhead to refloat the ship. The Maine appeared to be sitting upright on her keel with just a negligible list.
The sight sent a chill up Summer’s spine. “She looks intact and quite accessible. Al, do you think you can get a Creepy Crawler on her?”
“Problem solved,” Giordino grinned. “While the AUV was running its grid, I had the machine shop fabricate a harness with a timed release. The AUV can carry the crawler to the site and circle a few minutes until the timer activates. The crawler will deploy a transponder when she bails out, which will allow us to walk all over the Maine. If your stone was left on the ship, we just might find it.”
“How do you know,” Pitt asked, “that it wasn’t blown to bits in the explosion or ended up in the harbor?”
“The fact is, we don’t know if it was destroyed in the explosion,” Summer said. “As for it ending up in the harbor, Perlmutter told us the refloating of the Maine was very well documented. They even dredged all around the wreck site. There was no indication of its recovery.”
“So what makes you think it’s still on the ship?” Giordino asked.
“Two items give cause for hope. First, the recovery team was focused on refloating the ship. The Maine’s powder magazines were located forward, so the bow section suffered the worst damage. The engineers spent the bulk of their effort there, cutting away the damage and installing a bulkhead. The work crews in the stern just cleared away mud in the search for human remains. I’d like to think they would have left in place a heavy old stone.”
“Assuming,” Pitt said, “it was carried on the stern of the ship.”
“Our second point of hope there is the archeologist, Ellsworth Boyd,” Summer said. “Though he died in the blast, his body was recovered intact, indicating he wasn’t near the epicenter. As a guest, he would have had a stateroom in the stern. If he wasn’t near the worst of the explosion, there’s hope that the stone wasn’t either.”
“I think I like my odds in Las Vegas better,” Pitt said, shaking his head. “All right, you might as well get to it.”
Giordino chuckled. “Don’t worry, boss. I have a good feeling that Herbert won’t let us down.”
34
Giordino’s release system worked as advertised. Two hours later, they were watching in fascination as the Creepy Crawler scurried up a rise of sand and clawed its way onto the deck of the Maine. The crawler’s video camera showed a bare metal hulk, covered in only a light blanket of marine growth.
Giordino guided the crawler across the steel deck footings, now absent the inlaid teak that originally graced the ship. He battled with the crawler’s low level of lighting and an annoying time delay between his movements on a joystick and the device’s reaction, but he soon had it scurrying about the wreck.
The Maine’s remains were a ghostly tomb of corroding steel, the decks starkly empty. The robot crept into the stern superstructure, which had housed the officers’ and captain’s quarters. Where paneling and carpet once covered the interior, now there were only gray steel bulkheads. Most of the hatch doors had been dogged open, allowing free view of the empty cabins that had been home to sailors now long dead.
Giordino maneuvered the crawler down a companionway to the berth deck and into an empty wardroom. There was little to see other than some small cut-glass lighting fixtures that still clung to their ceiling mounts. Finding nothing that resembled a large stone, Giordino guided the crawler back to the main deck and exited the aft structure. He had bypassed the engine room and some coal bunkers, which everyone agreed were unlikely storage places for the stone.
“I think we’ve seen all there is to see.” He stretched the tired fingers that were operating the joystick.
“Nothing remotely resembling the stone,” Dirk said. “It probably didn’t survive the explosion.”
Summer nodded. “I guess we’ll never know the full Aztec tale.” She turned to Giordino. “Thanks for the effort, Al. If nothing else, you’ve captured some amazing footage of the old battlewagon.”
“All in a day’s work,” he said, sharing in their disappointment.
“How are you going to get your crawler back?” Dirk asked.
“I’ll send it walking toward Key West. If we’re still in the neighborhood in a few days, we can pick it up on the fly.”
As he spoke, the crawler caught a leg on a twisted ventilator that was pressed against the aft superstructure. Giordino had to reverse course in order to free the device.
“Hold up.” This came from Pitt, who had been standing silently behind the others, watching the video.
“Go back to where you got hung up.”
Giordino reversed the crawler a few steps. “Something catch your eye?”
“There, against the bulkhead. Can you zoom in with the camera?”
Giordino nodded and tapped a keystroke. The video display enlarged, revealing a metallic object wedged between the bulkhead and the damaged ventilator.
“It’s a gun,” Giordino said.
He finessed the camera controls to focus on the weapon. Pitt stepped to the monitor for a closer look. It was an open-frame revolver, showing only slight corrosion on the barrel and grip though missing its original wooden stock.
“It looks like a Lefaucheux,” Pitt said, “a French cartridge revolver that was a common sidearm with the Union cavalry during the Civil War.”
“It looks to be wedged pretty tight under that mangled ventilator,” Giordino said. “It must have gone unseen when they cleaned up the ship for refloating.” He brought the crawler a step closer, magnifying the image even more.