Night Probe!

by Clive Cussler

  The spacious bunk-style beds and ornate dressers had long ago surrendered to the ravages of the callous waters.

  The journey into time passed with agonizing slowness. It took nearly two hours for the RSV to break into a lounge area. "Where are we?" asked Gunn.

  Pitt consulted the drawings again. "We should be coming on the entrance of the main dining saloon."

  "Yes, there it is," Heidi pointed excitedly. "The large doorway to the right of the screen."

  Pitt looked at Gunn. "It's worth checking out. According to the plans, Shields' cabin lies on the deck directly below."

  The lights of the RSV played over the huge room, casting phantom shadows beyond the columns that supported the remains of the sculptured ceilings above the dining alcoves. Only the oval mirrors on the walls, their glass coated with decades of slime, bore mute testimony to the opulent decor that had once enhanced the passengers' dining pleasure.

  Suddenly there was a movement on the fringe of the light beams. "What in hell is that?" blurted Gunn.

  Spellbound, everyone in the control room started at the etheric cloud that floated into camera range.

  For long moment it seemed to hover, the outer edges vague and wavering in slow motion. Then, as if encased within a milky translucent shroud, a human form reached out for the RSV, an indistinct, disembodied form like two photographic negatives overlaying one another and producing a double exposure.

  Heidi fell silent; her blood turned to ice. Hoker sat like a chunk of granite at the console, his face dazed with disbelief Oddly, Gunn tilted his head to one side and studied the apparition with the clinical look of a surgeon contemplating an X-ray.

  "In my wildest dreams," he said in a hoarse voice, "I never really thought I'd see a ghost."

  Gunn's apparent composure didn't fool Pitt. He could see the little man was in a near state of shock.

  "Reverse Baby," he said calmly to Hoker.

  Fighting a fear he had never experienced before, Hoker gathered his senses and moved his fingers over the controls. At first the undulating shape receded in the background, and then it began to grow larger again.

  "Oh, lord, it's following," whispered Heidi.

  A quick glance at the strained, stunned faces showed the same realization on every mind. They stood paralyzed, their attention transfixed on the monitors. "For God's sake, what is it doing?" rasped Gunn.

  No one answered, no, one in the control room possessed the power of speech. No one except Pitt.

  "Turn Baby around and get it out of there, fast!" he snapped.

  Hoker forced himself to tear his eyes from the unearthly sight and pushed the power setting toFULL .

  The little survey craft was not designed for speed. At maximum, its thrusters could only propel it at three knots. It began a tight turn. The cameras in the bow panned away from the undulating menace, past the open portholes glowing weirdly from the filtered light from the surface, past the faces of the mirrors that reflected no more. The 180-degree maneuver seemed to take an endless time.

  And it came too late.

  A second transparent specter drifted above the threshold of the doorway to the lounge, its shadowy arms outstretched and beckoning.

  "Damn!" Pitt cursed. "Another one!"

  "What should I do?" Hoker's voice was pleading, almost desperate.

  It would be an understatement to say that Pitt held the undivided attention of everyone in the control room. They were awed by his glacial concentration. It was beginning to seep through to them why he was held in such high esteem by Admiral Sandecker. If ever a man was in the right place at the right time, it was Dirk Pitt standing on the deck of a salvage ship calling the shots against the unnatural.

  Given a century, they could never have guessed the thought running through his mind. All they could detect from his expression was that anger had replaced studied contemplation.

  If "Attack and be damned" worked with the phantom train, Pitt reasoned, there was little to lose by repeating the play. He nodded to Hoker.

  "Ram the bastard!"

  The mood abruptly changed now. Everyone took their strength from Pitt. Their fear gradually altered to growing determination to expose what their imaginations suggested were dead souls haunting the decaying ocean liner.

  The RSV zeroed in and struck the spectral barrier in the doorway. There seemed to be no resistance at first. The blurred figure gave way, but then it floated forward and its shroud enveloped the craft. All focus was lost from the cameras and the monitors projected only vague shadows.

  "It appears our hosts have substance," Pitt said conversationally.

  "Baby is not responding to command," Hoker called out. "The controls react as if it's immersed in cooked oatmeal."

  "Try reversing the thrusters."

  "No go." Hoker shook his head. "Whatever those things are, they've immobilized it."

  Pitt walked across to the control console and peered over Hoker's head at the instruments. "Why is the directional indicator vascillating?"

  "It's like they're wrestling with Baby," answered Hoker. "Trying to drag it somewhere, I would guess."

  Pitt gripped his shoulder. "Shut down all systems except the cameras.

  "What about the lights?"

  "Shut them down too. Let those heavy-handed ghosts think they've damaged Baby's power source."

  The monitors dimmed until their screens showed only blackness. They looked cold and dead, but occasionally a faint, undefined movement showed through. If a stranger had walked into the control room he would have written everyone off as men tally incompetent; finding a group of people standing enraptured by dark TV screens was a psychologist's dream.

  Ten minutes became twenty, and twenty became thirty. There was no change. Anticipation hung heavy in the air. Nothing and still nothing. Then very gradually, so gradually nobody noticed it at first, the screens began to lighten. "What do you make of it?" Pitt asked Hoker.

  "No way of telling. Without power, I can't read the systems."

  "Activate the instruments, but only long enough for the computers to record the data."

  "You're talking in microseconds."

  "Then go for it."

  The dexterity in Hoker's index finger ran a poor second to the incomprehensible speed of the data system as he flicked the switch. The demand signals were received by the RSV and returned to the computers, which in turn relayed their readout across the digital dials on the console before the switch clicked to OFF.

  "Position, four hundred meters, heading zero-twenty-seven degrees. Depth, thirteen meters."

  "It's coming up," Gunn said.

  "Surfacing about a quarter mile off our starboard stem," Hoker verified.

  "I can make out color now," said Heidi. "A dark green becoming a deep blue."

  The haze in front of the camera lenses began to shimmer. Then a bright orange glare burst from the video screens. Human forms could be distinguished now, blurred as though animated through a frosted window.

  "We have sun," declared Hoker. "Baby is on the surface."

  Without a word, Pitt ran from the room up a companionway to the bridge. He snatched a pair of binoculars hanging by the helm and aimed them across the river.

  The sky was free of clouds and the late morning sun reflected off the waters. A light breeze came in from the sea and nudged the short furrows upriver. The only vessels in sight were a tanker steaming from the direction of Quebec and a fleet of five fishing boats to the northeast, fanned out on different headings.

  Gunn came up behind Pitt. "See anything?"

  "No, I was too late," Pitt said shortly. "Baby is gone."

  "Gone?"

  "Perhaps kidnapped is a better word. Baby has probably been taken aboard one of those fishing boats out there." He paused and handed the glasses to Gunn. "My guess is the old blue trawler, or maybe the red one with the yellow wheelhouse. Their nets are hung so they block off all view of any activity on the far side of their decks."

  Gunn stared silently across
the water for a few moments. Then he lowered the binoculars. "Baby is a two-hundred thousand-dollar piece of equipment," he said angrily. "We've got to stop them."

  "I'm afraid the Canadians would not take kindly to a foreign vessel forcibly boarding boats inside their territorial limits. Besides, we've got to keep a low profile on our operation. The last thing the President needs is a messy incident over a piece of gear that can be replaced at the expense of the taxpayers."

  "It doesn't seem right," grumbled Gunn.

  "We'll have to forget righteous indignation," said Pitt. "The problem we have to face is who and why.

  Were they simply thieving sport divers or persons with more relevant motives?"

  "The cameras might tell us," said Gunn.

  "They might at that," Pitt said with a faint smile. "Providing the kidnappers didn't pull Baby's plug."

  There was a strange atmosphere in the control room when they returned, thick and acrid and almost electrical. Heidi was sitting in a chair shuddering; all color was drained from her face, her eyes were blank. A young computer technician had produced a glass of brandy and was coaxing her to drink it. She looked for all the world as if she'd seen her third ghost of the day.

  Hoker and three other engineers were bent over a circuit panel, checking the rows of indicating lights gone dark, fruitlessly manipulating knobs and switches. It was obvious to Pitt that all communications with the RSV had gone dead.

  Hoker looked up when he saw Pitt. "I've got something interesting to show you." Pitt nodded toward Heidi. "What's wrong with her?"

  "She saw something that knocked hell out of her."

  "On the monitors?"

  "Just before transmission was cut off," Hoker explained. "Take a look while I replay the videotape." Pitt watched. Gunn came and stood beside him, staring. The darkened screens slowly lightened and once again they saw the RSV break into sunlight. The glare lessened and then flashed in several sequences.

  "This is when Baby was lifted from the water," observed Pitt. "Yes," Hoker agreed. "Now catch the next action."

  A series of distortion lines swept horizontally across the monitors, and then abruptly the left one blinked out.

  "The clumsy nerds," Hoker complained bitterly. "They didn't know a delicate piece of gear when they saw it. They dropped Baby on its port camera and broke the color pickup tube."

  At that moment the shroud was pulled back, coming into focus. The material could now be clearly seen for what it was.

  "Plastic," exclaimed Gunn. "A thin sheet of opaque plastic.

  "That explains the protoplasm," said Pitt. "And there are your neighborhood spooks."

  Two figures in rubber diving suits knelt down and appeared to study the RSV.

  "A pity we can't see their faces under the face masks," said Gunn.

  "You'll see one soon enough," said Hoker. "Watch."

  A pair of legs clad in Wellington boots and denim pants walked into camera range. Their owner stopped behind the divers and bent down and peered into the camera lenses.

  He wore a British-style commando sweater with leather patches over the shoulders and elbows. A knit stocking cap was set at a casual side angle; graying hair along the temples was brushed fastidiously above the ears. He seemed to be in his late fifties, Pitt figured, or perhaps middle sixties. He had the look about him of a man who might be older than he appeared.

  The face possessed a cruel, selfassured quality, found in men who are familiar with hazard. The dark eyes had the detached interest of a sniper peering through a telescopic sight at his impending victim.

  Suddenly there was a slight, discernible widening of the eyes and the intense expression turned to anger.

  His mouth twisted with silent words and he spun quickly from view.

  "I'm not a lip-reader," said Pitt, "but it looked as if he said 'You fools.' "

  They remained, watching, as what looked like a canvas tarpaulin was thrown over the RSV and the monitors turned dark for the last time.

  "That's all she wrote," said Hoker. "Contact was lost a minute later when they destroyed the transmission circuitry."

  Heidi rose from the chair and moved forward as if she was in a trance. She pointed at the dead monitors, her lips quivering.

  "I know him," she said, her voice barely audible. "The man in the picture . . . I know who he is."

  Dr. Otis Coli inserted a du Maurier cigarette in a gold-tipped filter, clamped it between his dentures and lit it. Then he resumed poking through the open access panel into the electronic heart of the RSV.

  "Damned clever, the Americans," he said, impressed with what he saw. "I've read scientific papers on it, but never seen one up close."

  Coli, director of the Quebec Institute of Marine Engineering, had been recruited by Henri Villon. He was a gorilla of a man, barrel-chested, and had a rounded, heavy-browed face. His white hair passed his collar, and his mustache, beneath a thin, sloping nose, looked as if it had been clipped with sheep shears.

  Brian Shaw stood beside Coli, his face clouded with concern. "What do you make of it?"

  "An ingenious bit of technology," said Coli in the tone of a young man engrossed in a Playboy foldout.

  "Visual data is translated and sent by ultrasonic sound waves to the mother ship where it is encoded and enhanced by computers. The resulting imagery is then transferred to videotape with rather amazing clarity."

  "So what's the scam?" grunted Foss Gly. He perched boredly atop a rusty winch mounted on the blue fishing boat's foredeck.

  Shaw fought to hold down his temper. "The scam, as you so apathetically put it, is that these cameras were transmitting pictures when you brought them on board. Not only have the people on the NUMA ship been alerted to the fact they're being watched, they also have our faces recorded on videotape."

  "How does that concern us?"

  "Their project director is probably whistling up a helicopter this minute," Shaw replied. "Before nightfall the tape will be in Washington. And by this time tomorrow they'll probably have identification."

  "On you maybe," Gly said grinning. "My partner and I kept our face masks on. Remember?"

  "The damage has been done. The Americans will know we're not local divers looting a wreck. They'll be aware of who and what they're up against and will take every precaution."

  Gly shrugged and began unzipping his diving suit. "If that mechanical fish hadn't interrupted us, we could have laid the charges, blown the hulk and left them precious little to salvage."

  "Bad luck on our part," said Shaw. "How far did you get?"

  "We'd barely started when we saw lights coming from over the stern."

  "Where are the explosives?"

  "Still on the forecastle of the wreck, where we stored them."

  "How many pounds?"

  Gly thought a moment. "Harris and I made six trips each, towing two hundred-pound sealed containers."

  "Twenty-four hundred pounds," Shaw totaled. He turned to Doc Coli. "What if we detonated?"

  "Right now?"

  "Right now."

  "Weight for weight, Trisynol is three times as powerful as TNT." Coli paused to stare across the water at the Ocean Venturer. "The pressure waves from its explosion would break the back of the NUMA ship."

  "And the Empress of Ireland?"

  "Demolish the bow section and smash in the forepart of the superstructure. At that point the main force would be Absorbed. Further aft, a few bulkheads might buckle, a few decks cave in."

  "But the central section of the wreck would remain intact."

  "Quite correct," nodded Coli. "Your only accomplishment would be the mass death of innocent men."

  "Little sense in pursuing that quarter," Shaw said thoughtfully.

  "I'd certainly want no part in it."

  "So. Where does that leave us?" asked Gly.

  "For the moment, we tread softly," replied Shaw. "Sit back and observe, also find us another boat. The Americans are no doubt on to this one."

  A look of contempt cross
ed Gly's face. "Is that the best you can come up with?"

  "I'm satisfied. Unless you've got other ideas."

  "I say blow the bastards to bits and end it now," Gly said coldly. "If you lack the stomach, old man, I'll do it."

  "Enough!" Shaw snapped, his eyes fixed on Gly. "We're not at war with the Americans, and there is nothing in my instructions that condones murder. Only carnal idiots kill unnecessarily or wantonly. As for you, Inspector Gly, no more debates. You'll do as you're told."

  Gly shrugged smugly in acquiescence and said nothing. He didn't have to waste words. What Shaw didn't know, what no one knew, was that he had inserted a radio detonator in one of the Trisynol containers.

  With the press of a button he could set off the explosives anytime the mood struck him.

  Mercier ate lunch with the President in the family dining room of the White House. He was thankful that his boss, unlike other chief executives, served up cocktails before five o'clock. The second Rob Roy tasted even better than the first, though it didn't exactly complement the Salisbury steak.

  "The latest intelligence says the Russians have moved another division up to the Indian border. That makes ten, enough for an invasion force."

  The President wolfed down a boiled potato. "The boys in the Kremlin burned their fingers by overrunning Afghanistan and Pakistan. And now they've got a full-fledged Muslim uprising on their hands that has spilled into Mother Russia. I wish they would invade India. It's more than we could hope for."