Riptide

by Douglas Preston

  During his reign as pirate captain, Ockham won his victories with a rare blend of psychology, tactics, and ruthlessness. When attacking the heavily fortified Spanish city of Portobello, for example, he forced the nuns from a nearby abbey to place the siege engines and ladders themselves, reasoning that the strong Catholicism of the Spaniards would constrain them from firing. His weapon of choice became the musketoon, a short-barreled weapon that fired a lethal spray of lead pellets. Frequently, under pretense of a parley, he would gather the town fathers of a besieged city or the commanding officers of an opposing ship before him. Then—raising the weapons in both hands—he would destroy the group with a double blast.

  As his thirst for prizes grew stronger, Ockham's brazenness grew proportionately. In 1691 he tried an overland siege of Panama City, which ultimately failed. While retreating across the Chagres River, he saw a galleon in the nearby bay, heading for the open sea and Spain. When he learned that the ship was carrying three million pieces of eight, Ockham reputedly swore never to let another galleon escape his grasp.

  In the years that followed, Ockham turned his attention ever more strongly toward Spanish gold, the towns that hoarded it, and the ships that carried it. So adept did he become at anticipating the shipments of gold that some scholars believe he was able to crack the ciphers of Spanish captains and envoys [Cf. Thalassa restricted document Z-A4-050997]. In a single month's plundering spree of Spanish settlements in the fall of 1693, each of Ockham's eight hundred crew received six hundred pieces of eight as their share of the booty.

  As Ockham became more powerful and more feared, his sadistic tendencies seemed to gain ascendancy. Reports of barbarous cruelty became legion. Frequently, after overwhelming a ship, he would cut off the ears of the officers, sprinkle them with salt and vinegar, and force the victims to consume them. Rather than keep his men in check when despoiling a town, he would instead whip them into a lustful fury and then let them loose upon the helpless populace, reveling in the acts of violence and abandon that resulted. When victims could not provide him with the ransom he demanded, he would order them to be roasted slowly on wooden spits, or disemboweled with heated boathooks.

  Ockham's single greatest accomplishment came in 1695, when his small armada of ships successfully captured, plundered, and sank the Spanish flota de plata bound for Cadiz. The sheer volume of treasure he acquired—in gold bars and cakes, silver wedges and pigs, undrilled pearls, and jewels—has been estimated at over a billion dollars in face value alone.

  Ockham's eventual fate remains a mystery. In 1697, his command ship was found off the Azores, drifting free, all hands dead of an unknown affliction. No treasure was found on board, and scholars of the period agree he had concealed it along the east coast of the New World sometime shortly before his death. Although many legends of varying credibility have arisen, the strongest evidence points to one of three potential sites: Ile a Vache off Hispaniola; South Carolina's Isle of Palms; or Ragged Island, off the Maine Coast, seventy miles north of Monhegan.

  PRINTOUT ENDS SPOOL TIME: 001:02 TOTAL BYTES: 15425

  Chapter 14

  Hatch throttled down the diesels of the Plain Jane, then dropped anchor twenty yards off the lee shore of Ragged Island. It was 6:30, and the sun had just topped the sea horizon, throwing a gauzy gold light across the island. For the first time since Hatch had returned to Stormhaven, the island's protective mist had lifted completely. He clambered into the dinghy and motored toward the navy-issue prefabricated pier at Base Camp. Already the day was warm and humid, and there was a certain heaviness in the air that presaged bad weather.

  As he gazed across the scene, his old apprehensions began to ease. Over the last forty-eight hours, Ragged Island had grown comfortingly unrecognizable. An enormous amount of work had been accomplished, more than he could have believed possible. Yellow "crime scene" tape had been strung around the unstable areas of the island, with safe corridors delineated for walking. The meadows above the narrow strip of shingle beach had been transformed from a place of deserted silence to a miniature city. Trailers and Quonset huts were arranged in a tight circle. Beyond, a brace of massive generators thrummed, wafting diesel fumes into the air. Beside them sat two enormous fuel tanks. Bundles of white PVC pipe flowed across the muddy ground, shielding date lines and power cords from the elements and unwary feet. In the midst of the chaos stood Island One, the command center, a double-wide trailer festooned with communications gear and transmitters.

  Securing the dinghy, Hatch jogged along the pier and up the rough path beyond. Arriving at Base Camp, he walked past the Stores shed and stepped into the Quonset hut marked MEDICAL, curious to see his new office. It was spartan but pleasant, smelling of fresh plywood, ethyl alcohol, and galvanized tin. He walked around, admiring the new equipment, surprised and pleased that Neidelman had purchased the best of everything. The office was fully equipped, from a locked storeroom full of equipment and drug cabinets to an EKG machine. Almost too equipped, in fact: Among the medical supplies in the lockers, Hatch found a colonoscope, a defibrillator, a fancy electronic Geiger counter, and a variety of expensive-looking high-tech gadgets he couldn't identify. The Quonset hut itself was larger than it looked. There was an outer office, an examination room, even a two-bed infirmary. In the rear of the structure was a small apartment, where Hatch could spend the night during inclement weather.

  Stepping outside again, Hatch headed for Island One, carefully avoiding the ruts and furrows left behind by the treads of heavy equipment. Inside the command center, he found Neidelman, Streeter, and the engineer, Sandra Magnusen, bending over a screen. Magnusen was like a small, intense bug, her face blue in the outwash of the computer terminal, scrolling lines of data reflecting on her thick glasses. She seemed all business, all the time, and Hatch got the distinct feeling that she didn't like most people, doctors included.

  Neidelman looked up and nodded. "Data transfer from Scylla finished several hours ago," he said. "Just completing the pump simulation now." He moved aside to give Hatch a view of the terminal.

  SIMULATION COMPLETED AT 06:39:45:21

  RESULTS FOLLOW

  INTERLINK SERVER STATUS OK

  HUB RELAYS OK

  SECTOR RELAYS OK

  DATASTREAM ANALYZER OK

  CORE CONTROLLER OK

  REMOTE SITES CONTROLLER OK

  PUMP STATUS OK

  FLOW SENSORS OK

  EMERGENCY INTERRUPT OK

  QUEUE MEMORY 305385295

  PACKET DELAY .000045

  —CHECKSUM VERIFICATION—

  CHECKSUMS FROM REMOTES OK

  CHECKSUM DEVIATION 00.00000%

  DEVIATION FROM SCYLLA 00.15000%

  DEVIATION FROM PRIOR 00.37500%

  END RESULTS

  SIMULATION SUCCESSFUL

  Magnusen's brow furrowed.

  "Is everything all right?" Neidelman asked.

  "Yes." The engineer sighed. "No. Well, I don't know. The computer seems to be acting flaky."

  "Tell me about it," Neidelman said quietly.

  "It's running a little sluggishly, especially when the emergency interrupts were tested. And look at those deviation numbers. The island network itself shows everything normal. But there's a deviation from the simulation that we ran on the Cerberus system. And there's even more of a deviation from the run we did last night."

  "But it's within tolerances?"

  Magnusen nodded. "It might be some anomaly in the checksum algorithms."

  "That's a polite way of saying it's a bug." Neidelman turned to Streeter. "Where's Wopner?"

  "Asleep on the Cerberus."

  "Wake him up." Neidelman turned to Hatch and nodded toward the door. They walked out into the hazy sunlight.

  Chapter 15

  There's something I'd like to show you," the Captain said. Without waiting for an answer, he set off at his usual terrific stride, his long legs sweeping through the grass, leaving a backwash of pipe smoke and confidence. Twice he was stopped by Thala
ssa employees, and he appeared to be directing several operations at once with cool precision. Hatch scrambled to keep up, barely having time to glance at all the changes around him. They were following a roped path, certified safe by the Thalassa surveyors. Here and there, short aluminum bridges spanned old pits and rotten areas of ground.

  "Nice morning for a stroll," Hatch panted.

  Neidelman smiled. "How do you like your office?"

  "Everything's shipshape and Bristol fashion, thanks. I could service an entire village from it."

  "In a sense, you're going to have to," came the reply.

  The path climbed the island's incline toward the central hump of land, where most of the old shafts were clustered. Several aluminum platforms and small derricks had been placed over the muddy maws of shafts. Here, the main trail forked into several roped paths that wound around the ancient works. Nodding to a lone surveyor, Neidelman chose one of the central paths. A minute later, Hatch found himself standing at the edge of a gaping hole. Except for the presence of two engineers on the far side, taking measurements with an instrument Hatch didn't recognize, it seemed identical to a dozen other pits in the vicinity. Grass and bushes hung over the lip and sagged down into darkness, almost obscuring the edge of a rotting beam. Gingerly, Hatch leaned forward. Only blackness showed below. A flexible, metal-jointed hose of enormous circumference rose from the invisible depths, snaked across the muddy ground, and wound its way toward the distant western shore.

  "It's a pit, all right," Hatch said. "Too bad I didn't bring along a picnic basket and a book of verses."

  Neidelman smiled, removed a folded computer printout from his pocket, and handed it to Hatch. It consisted of a long column of dates, with numbers beside them. One of the pairs was highlighted in yellow: 1690±40.

  "The carbon 14 tests were completed at the Cerberus's lab early this morning," Neidelman said. "Those are the results." He tapped his finger on the highlighted date.

  Hatch took another look, then handed back the paper. "So what's it mean?"

  "This is it," Neidelman said quietly.

  There was a momentary silence. "The Water Pit?" Hatch heard the disbelief in his own voice.

  Neidelman nodded. "The original. The wood used for the cribbing of this shaft was cut around 1690. All the other shafts date between 1800 and 1930. There can be no question. This is the Water Pit designed by Macallan and built by Ockham's crew." He pointed to another, smaller hole about thirty yards away. "And unless I'm mistaken, that's the Boston Shaft, dug 150 years later. You can tell because of its gradual incline, after the initial drop."

  "But you found the real Water Pit so quickly!" said Hatch, amazed. "Why didn't anyone else think of carbon dating?"

  "The last person to dig on the island was your grandfather in the late forties. Carbon dating wasn't invented until the next decade. Just one of the many technological advantages we'll be bringing to bear in the coming days." He waved his hand over the Pit. "We'll begin construction of Orthanc this afternoon. Its components are already down at the supplies dock, waiting for reassembly."

  Hatch frowned. "Orthanc?"

  Neidelman laughed. "It's something we created for a salvage job in Corfu last year. A glass-floored observation post built atop a large derrick. Somebody on last year's team was a Tolkien fanatic, and the nickname stuck. It's fitted with winches and remote sensing gear. We'll be able to look right down the throat of the beast, literally and electronically."

  "And what's this hose for?" Hatch asked, nodding toward the pit.

  "This morning's dye test. That hose is connected to a series of pumps on the west shore." Neidelman glanced at his watch. "In an hour or so, when the tide reaches the flood, we'll start pumping 10,000 gallons of seawater per minute through this hose into the Water Pit. Once a good flow is established, we'll drop a special, high-intensity dye. With the tide ebbing, the pumps will help push the dye down into Macallan's hidden flood tunnel, and back out to the ocean. Since we don't know which side of the island the dye will emerge on, we'll use both the Naiad and the Grampus, spotting on opposite sides of the island. All we have to do is keep an eye out for the place where the dye appears offshore, send divers to the spot, and seal the tunnel with explosives. With the seawater blocked, we can pump out the water and drain all the works. Macallan's pit will be defanged. By this time on Friday, you and I will be able to climb down in there with nothing more than a slicker and a pair of Wellingtons. Then we can make the final excavation of the treasure at our leisure."

  Hatch opened his mouth, then shut it again with a shake of his head.

  "What?" Neidelman said, an amused smile on his face, his pale eyes glittering gold in the rising sun.

  "I don't know. Things are moving so fast, that's all."

  Neidelman drew a deep breath and looked around at the workings spread across the island. "You said it yourself," he replied after a moment. "We don't have much time."

  They stood for a moment in silence.

  "We'd better get back," Neidelman said at last. "I've asked the Naiad to come pick you up. You'll be able to watch the dye test from its deck." The two men turned and headed back toward Base Camp.

  "You've assembled a good crew," Hatch said, glancing down at the figures below them on the supply dock, moving in ordered precision.

  "Yes," Neidelman murmured. "Eccentric, difficult at times, but all good people. I don't surround myself with yes-men—it's too dangerous in this business."

  "That fellow Wopner is certainly a strange one. Reminds me of an obnoxious thirteen-year-old. Or some surgeons I've known. Is he really as good as he thinks he is?"

  Neidelman smiled. "Remember that scandal in 1992, when every retiree in a certain Brooklyn zip code got two extra zeros added to the end of their social security checks?"

  "Vaguely."

  "That was Kerry. Did three years in Allenwood as a result. But he's kind of sensitive about it, so avoid any jailbird jokes."

  Hatch whistled. "Jesus."

  "And he's as good a cryptanalyst as he is a hacker. If it wasn't for those on-line role-playing games he refuses to abandon, he'd be a perfect worker. Don't let his personality throw you. He's a good man."

  They were approaching Base Camp, and as if on cue Hatch could hear Wopner's querulous voice floating out of Island One. "You woke me up because you had a feeling? I ran that program a hundred times on Scylla and it was perfect. Perfect. A simple program for simple people. All it does is run those stupid pumps."

  Magnusen's answer was lost in the rumble of the Naiad's engine as it slid into the slip at the end of the dock. Hatch ran to get his medical kit, then jumped aboard the powerful twin-engine outboard. Beyond lay its sister, the Grampus, waiting to pick up Neidelman and assume its position on the far side of the island.

  Hatch was sorry to see Streeter at the helm of the Naiad, expressionless and severe as a granite bust. He nodded and flashed what he hoped was a friendly smile, getting a curt nod in return. Hatch wondered briefly if he had made an enemy, then dismissed the thought. Streeter seemed like a professional; that was what counted. If he was still sore about what happened during the emergency, it was his problem.

  Forward, in the half-cabin, two divers were checking their gear. The dye would not stay on the surface for long, and they'd have to act quickly to find the underwater flood tunnel. The geologist, Rankin, was standing beside Streeter. On seeing Hatch he grinned and strode over, crushing Hatch's hand in a great hairy paw.

  "Hey, Dr. Hatch!" he said, white teeth flashing through an enormous beard, his long brown hair plaited behind. "Man, this is one fascinating island you've got."

  Hatch had already heard several variants of this remark from other Thalassa employees. "Well, I guess that's why we're all here," he answered with a smile.

  "No, no. I mean geologically."

  "Really? I always thought it was like the others, just a big granite rock in the ocean."

  Rankin dug into a pocket of his rain vest and pulled out what looked
like a handful of granola. "Hell, no." He munched. "Granite? It's biotite schist, highly metamorphosed, checked, and faulted to an incredible degree. And with a drumlin on top. Wild, man, just wild."

  "Drumlin?"

  "A really weird kind of glacial hill, pointed at one side and tapered at the other. No one knows how they form, but if I didn't know better I'd say—"

  "Divers, get ready," came Neidelman's voice over the radio. "All stations, check in, by the numbers."

  "Monitoring station, roger," squawked the voice of Magnusen.

  "Computer station, roger," said Wopner, sounding bored and annoyed even over the radio.

  "Spotter alpha, roger."

  "Spotter beta, roger."

  "Spotter gamma, roger."

  "Naiad, roger," Streeter spoke into the radio.

  "Grampus affirms," came Neidelman's voice. "Proceed to position."

  As the Naiad picked up speed beneath him, Hatch checked his watch: 8:20. The tide would turn shortly. As he stowed his medical kit, the two divers came out of the cabin, laughing at some private joke. One was a man, tall and slender, with a black mustache. He wore a wetsuit of thin neoprene so tight it left no anatomical feature to the imagination.

  The other, a woman, turned and saw Hatch. A playful smile appeared on her lips. "Ah! You are the mysterious doctor?"

  "I didn't know I was mysterious," said Hatch.

  "But this is the dreaded Island of Dr. Hatch, non?" she said pointing, with a peal of laughter. "I hope you will not be hurt if I avoid your services."

  "I hope you avoid them too," said Hatch, trying to think of something less inane to say. Drops of water glistened on her olive skin, and her hazel eyes sparkled with little flecks of gold. She couldn't be more than twenty-five, Hatch decided. Her accent was exotic—French, with a touch of the islands thrown in.

  "I am Isobel Bonterre," she said, pulling off her neoprene glove and holding out her hand. Hatch took it. It was cool and wet.