“To be rescued?”
“Maybe.”
“You’re not telling me everything you know!”
“I don’t want to distract you from your driving.”
RUSS had almost reached the boat’s front section. They could see she was wedged in the silt of the upward slope of a rise in the ocean floor. She was keeling over to starboard and seemed on the verge of tumbling over onto the submersible that had invaded her world of death.
“She’s remarkably well preserved,” McCracken noted.
“You find lots of weird stuff in the Marianas, and everyone’s got a different interpretation for it. Hold on, I think we’ve got something….”
Patty slowed RUSS to a stop and McCracken was certain he could make out a sequence of letters on the screen before him. There was some sort of pattern; though the paint had been lost years before, the stenciled border was still intact. Patty brought the submersible backward and held it in place over the boldest letters left.
U S, then a blank space followed by a splotch of shapes that were unreadable.
“I’m going to infrared,” Patty told him, and flipped another switch. “Now let’s add magnification and see what we come up with…. There we go. That does it…. What the hell?”
McCracken saw the letters and felt the same kind of cold dread those on the ship must have felt forty-five years ago when she was hit. His breath tasted drier than salt. Up until the last he had hoped his initial suspicions were wrong. But the corpse ship’s name running across the screen eliminated any chance of that:
USS Indianapolis
Chapter 13
“I know that name,” Patty was saying. “I know it from somewhere …”
“The Indianapolis was the ship that delivered the atom bombs that were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It dropped them at Tinian, then stopped briefly at Guam en route to Leyte, where it was sunk by a Japanese submarine.”
“Of course! Those holes we found farther back on starboard. It fits! It fits!” She sounded genuinely excited. “We’re looking at one of the great finds in salvage history.”
“Except we can’t legitimately claim it,” Blaine told her. “Because someone else got here first.”
“Slide RUSS back along the hull to around the midpoint,” Blaine told her.
“Why?”
“Because I thought I noticed something on the screen before when he moved by. His camera wasn’t angled right for proper viewing, so it was only a glimpse.”
“Whatever you say …”
Patty maneuvered RUSS so he was actually gliding sideways, which slowed him because of the increased resistance, but provided an excellent view of the long stretch of hull in the process.
“There!” McCracken said suddenly. “Stop!”
Patty pulled the small joystick toward her and the submersible’s eye locked on a large hole a third of the way down the exposed reaches of the Indianapolis’s hull.
“Doesn’t look like a torpedo did that,” she commented. “It’s a perfect circle.”
“More likely cutting tools.”
She went to magnification again and the screen filled with a close-up of the hole. “On the money, McCracken. The edges are sliced evenly. Somebody made an entrance for themselves into that ship right here, and not too long ago either.” She looked up at him as he continued to lean over her shoulder. “The salvage team that preceded us here?”
“That would be my guess. But it seems a little deep for divers.”
“They could have ridden down in a manned submersible and emerged into the water only after the hole was made. You should see what some of the big salvage boys carry for equipment. High tech to the max. Strictly state of the art.”
“Bring RUSS up.”
“But he could fit through that hole. They left us a doorway inside that ship to see what they might have made off with. Don’t you want to—”
“Bring him up. We’ve got to get out of here.”
She sensed nervousness in his voice and went to work on the transistorized console immediately. An instant later RUSS had begun his rise and the Indianapolis had disappeared from view, returned to the isolation it had lived in for over forty-five years.
“You spoke of a weapon the salvage team came here to recover,” Patty said. “What you’re telling me is that this is the ship they pulled it off of.”
“At least tried to.”
“They were successful, all right, and if you let me send RUSS inside, I can—”
“Just keep bringing him up.”
“You’re scared. I can hear it in your voice. But what does this have to do with the weapon you’re searching for now? You said it yourself. The Indianapolis dropped its cargo off at Tinian. Her storage holds were empty when she was sunk.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that we’re not going to find out here in the middle of the—”
“Go on. Finish what you were saying.”
But McCracken wasn’t listening to her. His ears had detected a faint hum approaching in the distance.
“Get on your radio and call the naval station.”
“What?”
“Signal a Mayday! Give them our position!” Blaine commanded, because by then the hum had given way to a louder whirl, and his eyes picked up a dim speck on the open skyline — the shape of a plane slowly gaining size and substance as it soared toward them.
“Jesus Christ,” Patty Hunsecker muttered, already heading for the radio inside the cabin.
Blaine followed her inside. The plane was now only seconds away.
“What have you got for weapons on board this tub?”
“Saving the oceans is a pacifistic mission.”
“I was afraid of that….”
“Some spear guns, a flare pistol. That’s about it, I’m afraid.” Patty searched the band for the proper sending frequency with the mike pressed to her lips. “Guam Station, this is Runaway. This is a Mayday call. Repeat, this is a Mayday call. Our position is …”
The rest of her message was drowned out by the screech of the aircraft zooming over them and the explosion of water as a grenade dropped from it exploded just behind the Runaway’s stern.
“They’re trying to kill us!” Patty shrieked in the midst of her repeat message to Guam Station. In the small portal window before them, they saw the twin-engined plane bank for another pass.
“Very observant. Just keep sending … after you hand me those spear guns.”
Patty Hunsecker didn’t bother to protest, just rushed to a supply closet at the foot of the cabin stairs and yanked out a trio of state-of-the-art spear guns. They were plenty dangerous if wielded properly, but were meant to be used underwater and thus limited for this purpose.
“Runaway, we read you,” a voice squawked over the radio. “This is Guam Station, please come in. I say again, please come in. Over. …”
The attacking plane swirled in from the bow, and the portal exploded into flying shards of glass behind the bullets rupturing it. McCracken flung himself on Patty, discarding the spear guns long enough to tackle her to the floor. Above them the radio smoked and fizzled.
“Damn,” she moaned.
“Did you give them our coordinates?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean they heard anything.”
Blaine’s ears picked up the quickening of the plane’s engine as it came at them yet again, over the stern this time. Staying low, he pulled the spear guns toward him and was moving toward the cabin door when the next explosion rocked him. The Runaway shook like a ship struck by a great wave, then listed sharply to starboard. He slid toward the steps to the deck and just managed to avoid the ruined radio as it came flying down from its perch. He tried to grab hold of Patty, but she slipped away from him. He saw her head ram hard into the wall. She slumped over and Blaine propped her up against the bulkhead nearest the door to keep her safe from the water that would be rushing in momentarily.