His mind returned to the stories his father used to tell him of the Navajo witches who once protected and now haunted ancient kivas. Known as Skinwalkers, they represented the antithesis of Navajo cultural values. They were the evil reflections of goodly medicine men and women, performing twisted ceremonies and manipulating magic in a perversion of the good works medicine people traditionally performed. In order to practice their good works, traditional healers learn about both good and evil magic. Most could handle the responsibility, but some became corrupt and tormented.
Could there still be Skinwalkers inside?
He could think of only one person who might have answers. His best friend from high school, Kevin, had once jokingly told him to call if he ever found a big sipapu. He’d bet his life this one qualified. The sipapu was a hole in the ground, usually no bigger than a finger, located at the center of every kiva. It was a ceremonial reminder of the place where Southwestern Indians emerged back into the world after their long migration underground.
Only then did he notice that the weird wind was dying down. By the time he’d scaled the canyon wall and got back to his horse, it was completely gone. There was no sign a wind had ever scoured the top of the mesa, stolen a Stetson, and most likely led a man to his death.
Chapter Seven
It was 6:25 a.m. when the Saharan Bucket arrived on the scene and a little over twenty-six hours since the Gordoye Dostizheniye sank. The 55,000-ton deep sea dredging vessel had been seconded from its port of Anchorage in Alaska, where it was in the process of clearing glacial silt from the entrance to the harbor.
Sam Reilly watched as the mammoth vessel came alongside the Maria Helena. It was at least four hundred feet long with a bridge tower standing five stories above its deck. Along the deck were a series of giant pipes protruding twenty feet into the air, connected to muscular engines and designed to pump the sand and debris from the seabed.
The inflatable Zodiac was lowered into the water and Tom ran Sam across to the Saharan Bucket. The swell of the shallow water of the Bering Strait had picked up, but was still relatively mild, and the little runabout skimmed across the ripples.
Sam thanked Tom for the lift and climbed the steel ladder fixed to the side of the dredging ship’s starboard hull. Behind him, he heard the small motor of the runabout increase its pitch as Tom returned to the Maria Helena to continue a progressively wider search pattern of the surrounding area for the Gordoye Dostizheniye.
He reached the top of the ladder and climbed over the gunwale onto the deck.
“Sam Reilly?” A man in his late forties, with a well-groomed dark beard greeted him.
“That’s me.” Sam smiled, politely and offered his right hand.
The man took it in callused hands and shook, warmly. “Brendan Miller. Captain of this fine vessel.”
“Thanks for getting here so quickly.” Sam glanced at the array of powerful machinery that lined the deck. It all appeared so well maintained and clean that it would have brought a smile to the face of the matron of any military hospital. “You made good time from Anchorage.”
“Like every sailor, we’re still praying for survivors.”
“All right. Let’s get started.” Sam breathed in deeply through his pursed lips. “I should let you know there’s minimal chance of finding any survivors, but you never know. If there’s any, it would be impossible without your vessel to reach them.”
“Why is that?”
“It’s a strange theory and might require some sort of leap of faith.”
“Go on.” The captain turned to walk. “You can tell me on the way to the bridge.”
Sam followed. “When we arrived here in the early hours of yesterday morning, the sea was perfectly still. There was no evidence of any wreckage, or maelstrom. No icebergs. And yet, a moderate sized cargo ship apparently disappeared beneath the sea within minutes.”
“Okay, I’m listening. What do you think happened?”
“There was a tectonic shift.”
“An earthquake?”
“Nothing too dramatic. Just a simple rumble of tectonic plates. The result of the movement caused a sinkhole in the seabed below, which then drew trillions of gallons of seawater inside. During the subsequent vortex, the Gordoye Dostizheniye was pulled under. Seismic monitors recorded a minor tremblor.”
The captain’s thick bushy eyebrows narrowed. “But you haven’t located the ship yet.”
“No. But we’ve found a large conical mound of sand.” Sam paused at the top of the third flight of stairs. “It’s a longshot, but if I’m right about the vortex theory — the only possible explanation for there being no flotsam or other evidence of the wreckage — then the wreckage of the Gordoye Dostizheniye is lying directly underneath that sand.”
“You think the sand is covering the bridge tower?”
Sam shook his head. “Not immediately beneath it. We’ve already used ground penetrating radar. The mound is filled with loose sand. But I’m hoping we’ll find a cargo ship buried somewhere below that mound.”
“Like you said, it requires a leap of faith.” Miller shrugged. “Without anything better to go off, I’m willing to take that leap.”
“Good,” Sam said. “And if the Gordoye Dostizheniye is buried… there might still be survivors trapped inside the hull.”
Chapter Eight
The bridge of the Saharan Bucket gave the Maria Helena a run for its money when it came to high tech gadgetry and information systems. Hydrographic grade multibeam echosounders, sub-bottom profilers and sound velocity profilers provided a visual masterpiece of the ground below in an array of colors.
The bathymetric image showed a series of colors at the warm end of the spectrum — reds, orange and yellows — depicting the shallow area of the Bering Strait. To the south, the image shifted through the greens and blues of deeper water. At the center of the image, a conical tower formed in yellow.
Sam stared at the image. “If that is the Gordoye Dostizheniye’s bridge tower, it’s so shallow I could reach it with a single breath.”
Captain Smith shook his head. “It also means that if anyone is trapped down there, they’re less than sixty feet from the surface and completely helpless.”
“All right. Let’s see what your machine can do to help them.”
The captain made a few signals and the large auger dredge was lowered from a gigantic crane at the bow into the ocean. The head functioned like a cutter suction dredger, but instead the cutting tool was a rotating Archimedean screw set at right angles to the suction pipe. The dredge was a self-propelled version that allowed the system to propel itself without the use of anchors or cables.
The entire ship vibrated under the strain and a few moments later, Sam watched as thousands of gallons of sand and water was expelled a hundred feet into the air aft of the Saharan Bucket.
Captain Miller noticed his curiosity, and said, “The turbidity shroud on auger dredge systems creates a strong suction vacuum, causing much less turbidity than the conical basket-type cutter-head and so they are preferred for environmental applications. The vacuum created by the shroud and the ability to convey material to the pump faster makes auger dredge systems more productive than similar sized conical type cutter-head dredgers.”